Architectural Technologist - Plywood Structures

I wrote some time ago about the Wikihouse designed by a couple of students, well yesterday at the Timber Expo, I came across two more ply would structures and I found quite be accident a great video on YouTube about the same style of construction.

Basicly it's a method of joining ply would together much like the way the pieces in a jigsaw are linked together, using special links or cleaver cut edges that link two or three pieces together, with often no more than a peg.

Plywood dome

The first was on the TRADA stand and was the main centre piece covering the whole stand, in a series of linked domes, the structure was made up of flat pieces of ply linked by a metal hinge, with openings having right angle returns linked via mortise and tenon type joints to give rigidity to the arched opening, with the main done getting rigidity fron the way the panels were joined, very nice and very pleasing to look at, the photo today is of one of the many entrances. The main panels seem to form slight ridges that give the main dome it's structure, I have loaded up more on my Flickr account.

Next came as a complete surprise, in the shape of a 3rd year Architectural student Lewis Clarke, who had won a competition for his structure, Unfortunatly it was stuck away in the far end of the hall, and did not get the recognition his clever design warranted, again it was a ply structure held together with no more than pegs, but like a plonked I forgot to take a photo.

Next and perhaps the best find was the video below of a structure made by an American Rob Bell. Designed in Sketchup, there are just loads of pictures and free Sketchup files on the 3D Warehouse gallery to recreate his method of building. His site Zomadic.com is just loaded with articles on his building method, you must get over to his Flickr account to see his pictures of the structure he built for Burningman, a lots more. I downloaded the bootiesattva model and its great to view. Watch the video and follow the other videos on his YouTube channel for more videos on using Sketchup.

Is there a point to all this. Of course, it's a very pleasant structure, and I can easily see it being used as say emergency structures covered in tent material, or even exhibition structures, they certainly are eye catching, the only need in all these different designs is the supply of plywood, a cutting machine, would be nice, but with a push these patterns could be cut by hand.

I still rate the wikihouse as the best, offering so much and it's open source, so free to all to use, but the others are still very good to study.