Scott Burnham, curator of Urban Play, comes along with a very provocative theory connecting migrant workers' vernacular engineering and the famed Olympic Bird's Nest. "What I began to notice in almost every building is that, in the absence of formal safety equipment and structures, workers created intricate dense weaves in the upper story windows of the buildings they were working in to primarily, well, keep from falling out while they were working. These wooden weaves were always constructed with the same type of slats, and their assembly in a seemingly random fashion, yet after seeing dozens of them you begin to find a pattern in the repetition of assembly and structure." READ
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i think mr burnham would enjoy 'the beer can by the highway' by john kouwenhoven. old book, but written with a similar point of view: where do designers get their ideas? for some, the answer is a translation of something vernacular into something exceptional. an example he gives is mies' transformation of a cantilevered tractor seat spring into his basis for a cantilevered chair. fun read, anyway.
Steven - thank you very much for the book recommendation. I will certainly pick it up. Thanks again.
Yeah, the Bird's Nest lattice is also reminiscent of Chinese ice ray patterns. Something deep at work in the collective Chinese sub-consciousness?
Don't forget about Song Period porcelains and window shutters of Qing homes.
Those window catches aren't "designed," nor does the "design" of H&D's stadium rest solely on its aesthetic quality.
Vincent, I slightly disagree only because I think the activity of design can be broader by definition.
Each rib follow it's own plane, it define it's own 3 construction planes so it can be manufactored. That princip is nessery as if each rib did not it would be impossible to manufactor each rib.
I am happy someone understood how tight up in the tradisional construction planes we are, and here there are a prove of what become possible, when detail projecting care for the production of the individual building part. In other words, this would not be possible to build from a sketch, it is only possible by slicing each rib from a 3D virtural model.
Each slice producing a rib but not one that twist in all 3 directions as then it would be impossible to manufactor. The model ensuring all ribs to be accuratly documented as sort of rings, now what make that sort of open minded aproach towerds construction.
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