The Cardboard Structure

Hi, in the eagerness to find a location suitable for my future construction these last few days I have been traveling the Atlantic Ocean. Yes, I know it is soon yet, and I'm only beginning to gather information on materials and construction systems that it help me in the construction... you know I have not patience. I will keep you informed.

In other time, a such Galileo Galilei had demonstrated that all bodies fall at the same speed regardless of their weight (he was contradicting a such Aristotle), I have tried to make a strong structure and costly with a weak and economic material. "Have you gone crazy, Rodolfo?", you may question, but you know that I never would fall in the dementia without to be well illustrated, and in this case, by two Eminences of the architecture. But now we come to the point (as I like this expression!).

The Sixth Stop: The Cardboard Structure

The Japanese Shigeru Ban (prize winner of Pritzker 2014), has several projects in which he has shown us how with a material that it is as economical as the cardboard can do versatile and exquisite structures. Thus, he has delighted us in the Pavilion of Japan of the Expo 2000 in Hanover with a lighter structure that it lets large and bright spaces for the exhibition, in 2005 we were surprised with a structure that solved the cover and the space inside a temporary Museum that toured New York, California, Tokyo and Mexico (there are aircraft that cannot flying even half) and in the year 2012 was the realization of Pavilion Garage in the Gorky Park of Moscow... with a few pillars of cardboard that make you want to hug!!

But my favourite structure of Shigeru Ban is one that was built in 2013 in Madrid, Spain, and which had the collaboration of the studio "Serrano Suñer Arquitectura", also it is important to note that in the task are involved the students of the school of architecture (new blood). The building are "IE Paper Pavilion", a temporary facility that it was made in just twelve weeks and that, although it was intended for the Executive Education activities, also has hosted of several events as "ELLE Talks", organized by "ELLE magazine".

The structure is composed by 173 paper tubes joined by knots of wood which, in turn, it rest on columns of cardboard. The surface that covers the Pavilion is 110 m2 with a cover of 30 m2 outdoor. The tongue-and-groove is the union between the cardboard tubes (230 mm in diameter and 20 mm thick) and the laminated wood. The tongue-and-groove: the materials have outgoing and incoming, and with the fit, it forms a perfect union for efforts transmission. The screws give the possibility of quick and easy disassembly. This structure transmits tensions through 30 metallic tensors.

Technology

If I've managed to capture your attention, you do not miss now!, that it come the best!!

The German Michael Hansmeyer has done a cardboard columns with a informatics beauty, and I don't say "informatics" for a whim, I, consciously, I say this and I explain why. Michael is an architect and programmer, with the combining their two skills has created a column using an algorithmic system (ordered set of operations to find the solution to a problem) and a computer program, clear.

We will imagine that we fold a sheet of paper into four parts, and then we do the same again, and again and... come a time in which the chances of design are thousands if we cut those layers by different zones and stack. Mr Hansmeyer and his team has made this, basically, they make subdivisions in layers of cardboard of 1mm wide, then stack along of an axis and thus they create columns that are impossible to create handmade, and impossible to imitate.

The cardboards were cut by three laser cutters operating in parallel, in total it did more of 20 kilometers of cuts. The columns have 2,70 meters high and are consist of 2700 units. I challenge you to do an identical freehand drawing...

The Cardboard

The best of the cardboard is that it is an economical material, easy to replace, is a basic material and that it generates no residues. Its industrialization is so widespread that you can practically to find factories engaged to the manufacture of this material in any region of the world.

The necessary tests when using the rolls of cardboard as a structure in construction are the water absorption of the material, the resistance to compression and traction test and the resistance tests to torsion. Fundamental: the cardboard tends to the absorption of fluids, so it will be essential a protective varnish.

At this point I guess that you have guessed my idea: create a structure whose base is of cardboard and whose forms are modeled with the algorithmic system of the subdivision. Really, would you not like one as well? I'll have one, sure. Bye bye.

The Glass Dome

Hi, I know that you believe to know everything about me, it is not in vain, my face is well known in the communications media, my family has been in magazines since the creation of the printing and our friends are everywhere. I created one of these friendships while I lived in one of the family mansions, it located in the glorious and powerful city of Rome.

By then (as a poet would say) I, Rodolfo, was obsessed with the second reading of a book very peculiar and known: Moby Dick. One afternoon, I said a stranger in a fit of anger all what really I thought about the Captain Ahab and the crew of the Pequod, the stranger turned out to be a wonderful architect, the peerless Massimiliano Fuksas, the designer of the project that converge with other material worthy of praise and, therefore, worthy of being part of my constructive travelogue.

The Fifth Stop: The Glass Dome.

All starts when Benetton acquired the former Palace of the military Union in Rome and my friend Massimiliano is hired for reform and rehabilitation of the building. The name have given to the intervention is "The flashlight" since the rehabilitation has been carried out with a structure of steel and glass that it runs through the four floors of the building, from the ground floor up to the terrace, with panoramic view of the dome of the Basilica of San Ambrosio and Carlo al Corso, reason why I have decided to rename it and I call it "The Glass dome", do you like most?

The restoration of the building exterior has been very respectful and has focused on the rescue of the original elements, this give a contemporary touch to construction through the placement of outdoor lighting, this improvement the façade and the aesthetic characteristics. Fuksas has used the white (a bright white as few) as a main color in the interior and which serves as the enhancement of the decoration based on "bubbles" of different sizes and colors from violet to the reddish tones. There is a display of imagination and talent on tables, desks, puf, exhibitors, inside mirrors ovals... You don't miss the "furnitures" for the clothes! I particularly loved the staircase rungs of glass with LED lighting (because you know that I am a lover of the original stairs).

But in this work, there is not doubt that the star intervention is the flashlight that it connects visually the four floors and consists of a steel structure that it twists through combination of its triangular crystals. Inside you can buy the last novelty of H & M and you can scrutinize the windows trying to discover if there are two equal triangles. On the first floor or terrace you can enjoy of 300 square metres of panoramic restaurant. And from the outside you can admire the brilliance of glass that leaves no one indifferent.

Glass.

To such an extent reaches the beauty and the exquisiteness of "The flashlight" that the supplier of glass, Tvitec, has been awarded with the prize for the glass more representative of 2013 in the use of Isolar products, granted by Isolar Glas, the largest Association of independent manufacturers of glass insulating in Europe.

The Tvitec company has supplied for this work 1,800 square meters of laminate glass and of double glazing. In total, the structure account with extra complexity for the manufacturing, it can be seen with the naked eye, the parts used are of different sizes and of triangular forms (more than 1,500 units), which makes the process of cutting and sorting have caracteristics of craftsmanship. The maximum height of the dome is 7,50 meters, although in the original project had 3.00 meters, but the Roman authorities did not allow and I do not know why...

The glass is, without doubt, the material that has most influenced our way of understanding the building during the history of mankind. Thanks to it we can make metal towers or give the light to stone buildings, we can lighten loads and even distribute with elegance. It is a material which isolates us from the outside and, at the same time, it allows us to contemplation of what happens outside the walls. It is translucent or transparent, is deformable, it is paintable. The glass is synonym of edification and comfort.

Laminated glass and double glazing.

Laminated glass is composed of several sheets of glass linked by an intermediate layer created with polyvinyl butyral (PVB) and resins ethyl-vinyl-acetate (EVA). These glasses are used for their high safety due to its greater resistance, to the filtration of UV radiation, its durability and its wonderful acoustic protection.

The double glazing is consists of two glass separated by a chamber of air or argon with the resulting advantages: savings in costs of energy, reduction of the condensation, the sound insulation and the anti-rupture safety.

For any curious like me, to have many crystals in its construction is, rather than a requirement, an obligation. I have to see it all. Good bye.