The pages from a book as a lightweight component. The whole structure is one new book with a new written story. Lightweight structure merge with vegetation. The structure grows as the story.

The students also had a first crit with Anupama Kundoo, Arndt Goldack, Areti Markopoulou, Silvia Brandi and Gerd Fleischmann.

Flying books in morphed shapes create spaces and connection of knowledge and freedom

The considerations above books and our project are mostly about their duality. Back and front, when they are open, hard and soft, inner and outer parts, or lighter and whiter in, heavier and darker out…or even flexible the pages, motionless the cover.

Though this we came directly with a main division of this two parts, imaging the cover as the strong outer surfaces of the pavilion, and the pages  as real content, the warm they can make you feel, the beauty made by the color of the pages and their shape once bended, as in the picture.

Books in to Architecture by adding new material. Our action was to insert a structure, as you can see in the drawn scheme, between these parts, in the only empty space inside this solid structure as a book is. A structure where a steel string supports them, and at  the same time smaller X strings keep the cover up. This structure will works as a path roofs and a connection between points (trees, lampposts, walls) that represent different places (Cataluña to Spain or city to city in Cataluña)   where the books, or the knowledge, so the freedom, is the jumper wire between them. By this, transforming books in Architecture.

The final result is though as a book in a bigger scale, maintaining the sense of discovery and mystery that every book has, and the feeling of knowledge once you are in, in the pavilion and in the middle of a book. As architects, working with shapes more than words, we design the pages bending them as a sort of origami in order to make them communicate. A communication which can have lots of different readings, but mostly well connected with the sense of freedom, these pages will look to fly as free birds, or a dove, sign of peace, as well as the sheets are white. And also the configuration of all these roofs should follow the birds’ flight trajectory; a biomimetic way to underline the natural being of the books, made by trees’ trunk, far away from digital world.

As this structure will set up and figure out the general shape of the plaza, defining, dividing or accentuating its spaces, we’ll better accommodate these ones to be livable in a more different ways than an usual library, with various uses of books; this time the object is created using in two separate ways the outer and inner  part of books, again. The cover is the resistant and solid one, the pages will work as a soft thing, like a pillow, to host people to sit or leaning back. These ones are made just by books except for little pieces of natural rubber at the bottom, as frictions to the floor. This module, made by four books, can be multiplied by people themselves according to the use they want to.

The scheme of these strings can be easily replaced on the floor by long and curved books’ shelf, creating a dynamic space.

After analyzing books themselves and some structure with them at the beginning, and developing a urban scale flying ceiling, in the third day we came back to the small scale, thinking about lighting in the night and shading during the day. We’ll put LED light inside the bended pages in order to have the effect of seeing the only flying pages, lighted with the orange yellow light, as in the picture of reference, to give a warming feeling to people passing through, without seeing the dark cover. The choice of LED is about space, so we can have small strings who can make a gradient lighting, and about reaction to rain. Worrying about rain and the sheets we have tried to put the bended book under water, and see when dried how does he look like; the result was quite fine but not enough, maybe stronger the structure but too creepy for a pavilion of freedom, seemed more a vulture than a dove, so we’ll look for some solution with protective varnish.  Regarding the shadow we tried different solutions, as shown in the picture, making small prototype, on how these steel strings can connect themselves and move during the day, along a given axe built by us. So combining the movement of the shapes as the projection of birds’ path, and a real kinetic movement to define new spaces.

The project consists in creating a flexible structure by interlocking books in different directions. Using weight distribution it creates a bouncing sequence that can be manipulated into different geometries.  

The initial concept was to build an interactive bookshelf. It would shift according to the weight of the books placed on it, thus creating a structure that adapts to the activities around book exchange.  The structure allows us to play with different heights, compress, extend or even twist to obtain the desired composition.

Stretching the structure in different directions we discovered that the pattern could be extended in curves and create structural elements with its movement. The first experiments apply the same sequence with different book sizes and interlocking systems to determine which scale the element could be used in. We are focusing on the variety of configuration the prototype could evolve into knowing it could be applied to shifting structural elements or moving furniture units within the shop.

Maintaning the capacity to read a book in a structure for supporting a book-dome.
In the roofstructure you can see the covers of the book. In the columns you can feel and read the books.

DOME
Overlapping connection working in tension by the own weight of the books.
Added materials could be resin or screws to reinforce the connection.

BOOKSHELF COLUMN

Shelf and columns out of books.
The books are reable in the column.
Added materials can be a wire to hold the column into place and a clips keeping the corners stif.

COMBINATION OF COLUMN AND DOME

Next step is to make add new materials to reinforce the structure.

an extension of the structural book bay, this module was developed through stretching the limits of ‘Grid 1′, and the interlocking connection.

there is a particular formula for the structural arch, which is involved the dimension (weight) of the books, the number of books in the chain, and the angle of incidence between the chain and the ground, the determining of which introduces new potential experiments. in this case, the arch lost its rigidity due to having too many book in the chain proportionally to the weight (compressive power) of each member and fell apart. this failure provided some insight into unlocking the potential of this connection.

we then bent the members of the arch to extreme angles to maximize the strength of the connection, creating spirals, helixes, and a self contained circular bay. this module has a lot of potential in its ability to be aggregated by stacking, or laterally to form a larger scale honeycomb/geodesic structural mesh. we are interested is exploring further connections and aggregation using only books.

the kinetic skin can cover horizontal, vertical and diagonal planes

A new building material of compressed pages allowing any form, flexibility, and stability.

The form, space and geometry is not obligated to maintain rigidity – it is free. It will morph and adapt to the needs of it’s users and to the moment. Liberated.

The material itself will be formed from a jigsaw of compressed books of all shapes and sizes. The thickened layers the panel will allow greater structural integrity whilst maintaining the fluid, flexibility property of the material.

The massed panels can be milled or kuka-cut with digital tools to create perforations, windows, shelves, doors, or even just openings for sunlight and ventilation.

The cut layers will display the pages in section of the material – the layers of pages creating contours of the topography of each opening.

The manufacturing process can be highly optimized by the use of digital fabrication.

Assembly

Flying books in morphed shapes create spaces and connection of knowledge and freedom

The considerations above books and our project are mostly about their duality. Back and front, when they are open, hard and soft, inner and outer parts, or lighter and whiter in, heavier and darker out…or even flexible the pages, motionless the cover.
Though this we came directly with a main division of this two parts, imaging the cover as the strong outer surfaces of the pavilion, and the pages as real content, the warm they can make you feel, the beauty made by the color of the pages and their shape once bended, as in the picture.
Books in to Architecture by adding new material. Our action was to insert a structure, as you can see in the drawn scheme, between these parts, in the only empty space inside this solid structure as a book is. A structure where a steel string supports them, and at the same time smaller X strings keep the cover up. This structure will works as a path roofs and a connection between points (trees, lampposts, walls) that represent different places (Cataluña to Spain or city to city in Cataluña) where the books, or the knowledge, so the freedom, is the jumper wire between them. By this, transforming books in Architecture.
The final result is though as a book in a bigger scale, maintaining the sense of discovery and mystery that every book has, and the feeling of knowledge once you are in, in the pavilion and in the middle of a book. As architects, working with shapes more than words, we design the pages bending them as a sort of origami in order to make them communicate. A communication which can have lots of different readings, but mostly well connected with the sense of freedom, these pages will look to fly as free birds, or a dove, sign of peace, as well as the sheets are white. And also the configuration of all these roofs should follow the birds’ flight trajectory; a biomimetic way to underline the natural being of the books, made by trees’ trunk, far away from digital world.
As this structure will set up and figure out the general shape of the plaza, defining, dividing or accentuating its spaces, we’ll better accommodate these ones to be livable in a more different ways than an usual library, with various uses of books; this time the object is created using in two separate ways the outer and inner part of books, again. The cover is the resistant and solid one, the pages will work as a soft thing, like a pillow, to host people to sit or leaning back. These ones are made just by books except for little pieces of natural rubber at the bottom, as frictions to the floor. This module, made by four books, can be multiplied by people themselves according to the use they want to.
The scheme of these strings can be easily replaced on the floor by long and curved books’ shelf, creating a dynamic space.