Anemone

2014

This design process is about exploring and feeling materials. It seeks to speculate about a different way of designing: how to develop a project through doing, not imagining. The opportunity afforded by the recuperation of a large quantity of sarking material provided a chance to work in a much more hands-on manner. The theme of this project, is the idea of letting go of the design: allowing the material some autonomy. Through relinquishing authority to the material, one is allowing for error within a certain framework. Losing control over the process is not fatal to the project: it opens up new possibilities. Architecture students have limited exposure to working directly with materials, this projects seeks to challenge this trend. The construction yielded some unexpected results, from a scheme directed by a controlled geometry, the prototype demonstrated that the behaviour of inflated columns was all but regular. Static images couldn’t do the structure justice, it became a dynamic, reactive and uncontrollable. From the exploration of the phenomenological qualities of inflatables, a series of representations were produced. The real thing confounds the imagined design, and is suggestive of a whole series of potential pathways to explore from here.