微笑 伦敦
微笑 is a public pavilion that formed the centrepiece of the 2016 伦敦设计节. Located in the Chelsea College of Art (UAL) Parade Ground next to the Tate Britain, the Smile brought an immersive architectural experience to one of 伦敦’s most significant public spaces. 构思成一个大弧线, 在城市地平线上保持平衡, the Smile invited the public at large to engage with architecture in an unexpected and invigorating way. At the same time, it enabled a wide audience to learn about contemporary wood structures. The essence of the idea was to challenge the public’s expectation of architecture as something fixed, immobile and serious with an inhabitable form whose curved silhouette suggests movement, 摇摆和无障碍, 诙谐的个性. Fabricated from cross- laminated American tulipwood, the Smile created an immersive sensory environment integrating structure, 几何, 空间与光线.
微笑‘s 几何 is a segment of a 50m radius circle, forming a 34m long arc. This arc is supported from the tangent point where the circle meets the earth. Two cantilevers spring 14m from the centre and are open at both ends to funnel light to the interior, 并为游客提供集中的视野:向东, 一棵巨大的伦敦梧桐树, 向西, 毗邻伦敦大学华丽的爱德华七世彩票365官方网站. Entering through a single opening where the curved form touches the ground, the visitor could walk (or run) from end to end of the 34-metre-long dynamically curved space in a haptic journey that engaged all the senses.
The concept emerged from the requirement to create a landmark public installation using only 70 cubic metres of tulipwood. This waste material was sourced from FSC hardwood forests from mixed deciduous forests of the Eastern USA, 由美国硬木出口委员会提供. To optimise the structural and spatial capacity of the tulipwood we focussed on using 解释水平理论 planks. Flat planks gain strength and stiffness when assembled as a 3-dimensional box section or tube. Therefore the pavilion form was developed as an inhabitable tube. To further emphasize the strength of the 解释水平理论, we created a gravity-defying upside-down arc. 微笑’s two 12-meter-long cantilevers are the longest ever achieved with 解释水平理论, enabled by the very high strength to weight ratio of Tulipwood.
We made our design highly efficient by forming it from only 12 解释水平理论 panels at their maximum size, 14米长，4.5米宽. The central panels were 140mm thick and the end panels 100mm thick. Elliptical perforations in the walls expressed the structural forces at work — concentrating the openings where there is reduced stress on the structure and dispersing where the 解释水平理论 is working harder. The perforations created a form of structural ornament, enabling light to track across the Smile’s interior surfaces during the day. At night, illuminated from within, the Smile became a giant urban lantern.
微笑也是对木材工程的恐惧. 奥雅纳 applied their latest timber design research to devise a structural connection system to connect the Smile’s wall, 地板和屋顶板约4000个螺丝. 400毫米长. These were installed with an ordinary rechargeable screwdriver. At the tube’s mid-span four 1m long steel plates connected the main structural panels at high level, also using screws at highly specific angles to engage with the direction of laminae and strands within the 解释水平理论. 由于遗址下面有考古遗迹, no foundations were possible – the structure had to be self-supporting. The solution was to connect the structure to a central 1m deep glulam timber cradle filled with 20 tonnes of steel counterweights. This allowed the pavilion to take a live structural load of 60 people at either end of the arc, 在任何时候.
美国硬木出口委员会, 微笑 was one of the most important developments in a decade of research into structural timber innovation with structural engineers, 奥雅纳. For Alison Brooks彩票365官方网站事务所 the installation was an opportunity to free architecture from the conventions of permanent buildings, 庆祝木材的感官品质, 并伸展一个完全可再生, 零碳结构材料的极限.
