2. Becomes This
Integrated Studio collab. with Andreas Manos (UC Berkeley, 2023)
Instructor: David Jaehning
The production of mass timber products involves transforming a tree into a component that is ultimately a more robust composite of its original self. These transformations can include a number of operations from cutting, grinding, peeling, slicing to pressing, heating, molding, gluing, nailing, etc… the outcome being turning something cylindrical (a tree) into something flat (dimensioned lumber). Becomes This reckons with the treatment and processing that underpins mass timber products and plays with turning flat cornered surfaces into something cylindrical again. In order to better understand wood as a structural unit and learn about its possible limits, the project examined a tree’s cellular structure. Trees rely on their cells as a basic structural unit, the cell formations informed much of the design decisions, specifically the cells’ round form and bundled strength. This studio focused on expressing “structure as concept” and this project responds to this prompt quite plainly with nothing more than floor plates and 25-bundled glulam structural tubes which result in a series of interstitial spaces used for programming needs and the the building’s internal MEP systems.
