This was my first excercise in large-scale woodworking and designing temporary conceptual objects/spaces.
The brief for the project was to design and assemble a temporary timber structure to engage with the context of the terrace at one of the Glasgow School of Art buildings and its surroundings.
This was a group project with 7 fellow architecture students: Jack Swanson, Adam Telfer, Jennifer Taggart, Linus Third, Herfa Thompson, Lassi Tulonen and Nathan Howie.
The site that we were allocated was quiet empty, unengaging and a little bit crude it terms of textures and materials. It can boast, however, a spectacular view onto the Mackintosh Building across the road - a gem of Scottish Art Nouveau - and also a quiet pleasing view of the lively streets and crossroads of Glasgow stretching out to the horizon.
Our concept was to create a structure, that both in form and atmosphere, would invite a visitor to get in, sit down and enjoy these two main focal points.
The design for this piece was all about contrasts: outside box-like shell to the internal curvature of seat, dark grey to warm tone timber, rough ropes against elegant Mackintosh facade, etc.
Since materiality and textures were very important to us, we went to great lengths to source good quality timber for the cladding of the curved seat and managed to find good quality douglas fir... for FREE!
Architecture school teaches you very well how to be creatively resourceful among other things.
View from street level was an important aspect in our design as well and we felt that in the end, it blended quiet nicely in the surrounding context.
It is worth mentioning that everything in this structure was hand-made - sawn, cut, glued, nailed, screwed, painted etc. - by us, architetcture students, and we learned a great deal about basic construction and structural principles. And also enjoyed the process from start to end!
