laguna pavilion.
A canopy we designed for an island in a pool at Portomaso, never built: thin timber strips bent and woven into a shell, worked out through small bending models in the workshop.
- location
- portomaso, st julian’s
- year
- 2018–2020
- sector
- commercial · pavilion
- system
- bending-active timber canopy
- made by
- matter make
the project
The idea was a canopy that holds itself up by being bent. A thin timber strip wants to spring back when you curve it. Cross and clamp enough of them and that spring becomes the structure. Engineers call it bending-active.
We worked it out by making. On screen, Grasshopper and Kangaroo studies of rods bending and ribbons twisting. On the bench, small models with strips, spacers and clamps, to see what actually stood up and what didn’t. Japanese basket weaving was never far from the table.
In July 2018 we took the work to ITKE at the University of Stuttgart, to talk it through with people who know these structures far better than we do.
It was never built. It lives on in the drawings and the models.
