DESIGNING WITH NATURE EXHIBITION
PROJECT TYPE: EXHIBITION DESIGN
The designing with nature exhibition was a commissioned showcase combining the narratives of structural design optimisation, biological algorithms and 3d printing.
Prior to establishing Iguana Architects, Yaniv Peer was central to the team that designed this showcase of Exploration Architecture's work. The team placed as much emphasis on the exhibition stands as the it did on the content of the projects displayed, as a way of highlighting the practices design principles. the overall exhibition took a sinuous sweeping form that was fragmented in to 23 stands, half of which were designed to use a thousandth of the material by volume of their non-printed plinth counterparts.
The 3d printed stands optimisation process combined the frugal growth patterns of the giant amazon water lily with a structural optimisation program to yield a highly material efficient and elegant design.
As the world renowned biologist Julian Vincent has observed "in nature materials are expensive and shape is cheap". the exact opposite is true in the built environment which is why 3d printing was selected as the stands production medium, allowing the designer to get far closer to the way in which nature deposits its materials where the structural function is required.
The added bonus of 3d printing the tables was that we could use potato starch (pla) as the printing material which means that the exhibition stands can be composed at the end of life within six months and without any damage to the environment.
Design: Exploration Architecture: Michael Pawlyn | Yaniv Peer
Fabrication: 3dee and Lukas Oehmigen