Appealing to the Masses, or Serious Play with Blocks (2004)
article⁄Appealing to the Masses, or Serious Play with Blocks (2004)
abstract⁄With a certain budget and limited access to a ComputerNumericallyControlled mill, fourth year architecture students were charged with the problem of designing a fullscale architectural space that could be assembled and reassembled in various contexts and configurations. As the constraints for the design studio, an economy of capital 150 per student and an economy of means were devel’oped to create and produce over 600 units of a flexible architectural component, and many variations, into a building system that could be assembled to create multiple formal and spatial configurations push’ing the concept of MassCustomization towards MASSAppeal. After choosing a unitmultiple method as the most practical parti for designing a space which can be disassembled and reassembled in multiple configurations and contexts, the students developed the economy of their block unit based on a maximization of blocks per sheet of 4’x 4’ Medium Density Fiberboard. 4’ x 4’ was the maximum size that could be cut on the CNC mill at the school of architecture. The cut sheet was developed such that less than 3 of the board would go to waste. The exploration of assembly with these components produced multiple block types and multiple connection types that gave flexibility to the designed system.
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| Year |
2004 |
| Authors |
Surjan, Terry. |
| Issue |
Fabrication: Examining the Digital Practice of Architecture |
| Pages |
138-149 |
| Library link |
Philip Beesley, Nancy Yen-Wen Cheng & R. Shane Williamson, 2004. bib⁄Fabrication: Examining the Digital Practice of Architecture. University of Waterloo School of Architecture Press. |
| Entry filename |
appealing-to-masses-or-serious-play |
