Fictional ProtoArchitecture
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
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Project Description
There are no homogenous material assemblies in nature. Wood is such an intricate natural material that is rich in inherent features starting on the microscopic level. It is essential to analyse and understand the material's capabilities in all the scales to uncover brand new material behaviours and design possibilities. We enter an age of digital fabrication with compound wood materials allowing for reliable properties and milling technology enabling complete manipulation of solid wood.
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Description of the project
Summary
The geographical position and abundance of forests determined the spread of wood as the main building material of Bukovina in the 20th century. Therefore, Vatra Dornei holds a rich collection of woodenware and reminiscences of wooden architecture with outstanding ornamentation. Due to industrialization and standardized building products, material’s innate characteristics and inherent heterogeneity remain largely neglected and unexplored.
Assembly lines caused a world made of parts, framing the imagination to think about the objects as assemblies of discrete parts with distinct functions. But there are no homogenous material assemblies in nature. We enter an age of digital fabrication, with compound wood materials allowing for reliable properties and milling technology enabling complete manipulation of solid wood.
The project's design is based on the complex wood anatomy and material investigation, combining various scales and parts of wood, which enabled discovering new unseen forms out of wood. The project aims to rediscover the local folklore of wooden architecture and introduce design parameters proposing ethnographic environments that speak truly of its birthplace and the future.
Today, our task is not to resist the global, but to seek the most creative ways to develop the richer regions. Therefore, not a mixture that erases difference, but instead a compound that enables creating a new kind of difference. By acknowledging geography, climate and landscape, we can create a vision that speaks truly of its birthplace and the future of Bucovina.
Key objectives for sustainability
This poetic heritage lost its sensibility during the historical breakdown. After the 2nd World War, everything underwent dramatic changes. Rapid modernization made a remarkable impact on the local architectural tradition. This historical moment was confusing the cultural values. More and more wooden buildings were set on fire, abandoned or destroyed. The cultural wooden heritage as well as local identity became just history and remained forgotten. The world of design has been ruled by manufacturing mass production. Assembly lines were causing a world made of parts, making the borders for the imagination of designers and architects. Each object was understood as assemblies of discrete parts, making the borders of the imagination of designers and architects. Each object was understood as assemblies of discrete parts with distinct functions.
The project started with my interest in the ethnographic heritage of Romania, particularly in local crafts - wooden architecture and arts. Geographical position and the abundance of forests have determined the spread of wood as the main building material. Therefore, Bukovina holds a rich collection of woodenware and reminiscences of wooden architecture with outstanding artistic ornaments. Visual language illustrates the place's cultural heritage, where the common intuitive character was to express the close relation to the natural environment. The ornaments were blurring the borders between the inside and the outside, which was the prime local desire. The cult of nature was always an identity feature in arts.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
The project attempts not to distinguish between the natural and the artificial but to perceive the qualities of the unified structure. It is articulated as a flowing landscape with the scattered elements having no defined boundaries operating between the chisel and the gene, between machine and organism, between assembly and growth.
The prefix "proto-" does not only refer here to the futuristic dimension. This is only one of its meanings, undoubtedly a significant one. Everything is beyond the world (das Gaby Andere, radical otherness). Still, it breaks with semantics and syntax, such as biological linguistics and is part of the conception of advanced geometries that give coherence to complicated structures. There are design methods that are defined by the proto-cellular coherence of a cybernetic and performative architectural object.
Recently architecture has experienced an extraordinary increase of technological possibilities for advancing architectural design. Nevertheless, the impact of technology has left some great aspects of the design largely unchallenged. Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and algorithmic Computational Design contribute largely in employing the computer's capacity to broaden the knowledge and instrumentalize wood's complex behaviour. Universal regionalism means a global culture in which material logics create regions rather than the other way around. Tourism today is integrated with cultural forces as well.
Key objectives for inclusion
Communication in architecture means connection with and through architecture. Spatial-architectural communication is neither a preliminary nor a contribution to other biological communication processes but part of them. It chooses the space for dialogue and communicates this choice via the form.
The experiment is designed by translating the original bio-morphological process into another scale, which allowed us to see the intricacy of the material from a different perspective. Scattered architectonic spaces are integrated within the landscape.
Regarding the interdisciplinary and professional collaboration with local communities, inclusion and empowerment are two strategies for rediscovering the architectural folklore that should be presented to integrate citizens’ design ideas and wishes in the urban planning, architecture character and management process. Additionally, this methodology is a unity of local knowledge and observation. The approach combines crowdsourcing citizens’ opinions and thoughts through modern information and communication technology (ICT) with active design tools. The active design feedback from a city’s inhabitants is identified as a yet missing but essential element in the path towards responsive architecture and further, responsive city.
The delivery of the digital timber project demonstrator throughout this framework and the publication of the guidance document outlining a future digital fabrication-aware language will place the revival of Bukovina's folklore at the forefront of the oncoming digital revolution in the construction industry. It will help modernize an industry critical to the sustainable functioning of society as a whole, inclusive of societal, economic and environmental factors.
Innovative character
The Protoarchitectonic-based structure combines various scales and parts of the spatial program and functions as an artificial self-organising organism. The structure is composed out of vessel units merging into fluid spaces. The function of spaces follows the types and characteristics of the organism being referenced. Forms are nature-based but artificial. Wooden vessel skin is heterogeneous alike in nature, dividing surface to the differentiated fabrication and wood types. Vessel wall details are entirely dependent on the exact relationship with the whole structure of the landscape.
Even that the material is fabricated digitally, it is still a naturally grown biological tissue, which inhabits life forms replicating within it. Some parts of the material, not depending on the type of preservation, are constantly in the process of decay. The project represents the system of an organism with various scales of ingredients.
The wood-based folklore is designed to combine various scales and parts of the wood that functions as an artificial forest. The structure is composed out of vessel units merging into fluid spaces. The function of spaces follows the types and characteristics of wood being used.
This so-called proto-folklore represents a vertical wood cell, where the spaces are created by cell walls dividing the unit. Each vessel represents a combination of various scales and parts. Circulation infrastructure is connecting vessels continuously throughout the entire site.
The vessels' diverse organic spaces have no defined borders between the interior and exterior, providing spatial transparency in a very intricate organism. Interrelating horizontal and vertical elements are providing a new spatial experience.
