Hasta La Ideas

Students at the Architectural Association in London have constructed leaf-like sculptures that curl down from a fourth-floor roof terrace to a ground level courtyard.

Top: photograph by Valerie Bennett

Strips of plywood from recycled exhibition panels were twisted into pairs and fastened together using cable-ties to create the three separate parts of the 3013 installation.

The suspended sculptures are draped over the brick walls of the AA building at Bedford Square.

Led by artist Lawrence Lek, industrial designer Onur Ozkaya and architect Jesse Randzio, students designed and fabricated the installation for a unit on the summer programme.

Temporary timber pavilions constructed outside the AA in the past have resembled logs, mushrooms and shells – see more stories about AA projects here.

Photography is by the unit, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here are some more details from the AA:

3013 Installation at the Architectural Association

In a thousand years, London will be saturated. Constrained by the green belt around it and freed from restrictions on building skyscrapers, the city will grow inwards and upwards. Within this scenario of extreme density, students at this AA Summer School unit led by artist Lawrence Lek, industrial designer Onur Ozkaya, and architect Jesse Randzio imagined how public space could evolve and adapt to smaller, vertical sites.

The unit developed a sequence of three skins to connect the upper terrace and lower courtyard at the AA in Bedford Square. The surfaces were formed from pairs of twisted plywood strips cut from salvaged exhibition panels. These were joined together at their edges to form flexible skins tailored to the site. The upper skins were suspended from above, lightly touching the existing brick walls for support; the fabric-like behaviour of the surfaces allowed their final form to be determined by how they rest naturally under gravity.

This installation revealed the hidden relationships between different levels of the building, creating temporary shelters and flexible gathering points that address how the city might be occupied today and in the future.

Students: Agni Kadi, Ehsan Ehsari, Frances Liu, Galo Carbajo Garcia, Hande Oney, Harsh Vernaya, I Ching Chu, Joaquin Del Rio, Julia Kubisty, Leonardo Olavarrieta, Marina Olivi, Masayo Velasco, Paco Alonso, Pedro Domingues, Summer Lin, Tess Zhang

The project was one of five units at the AA’s Summer School 2011 programme.

See also:

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Grompies at the AA	Driftwood pavilion by AA Unit 2	Swoosh Pavilion at the AA