WORKSHOP
ADSL Week, Artesis Hogeschool Antwerpen, Antwerp, Belgium, 2009
Coordinators: Aleksandra Jaeschke, Andrea Di Stefano
WORKSHOP BRIEF:
A Banyan tree sends down from its branches great numbers of shoots, which in bundles become new trunks and take root. Its original trunk may decay and leave the younger ones to proliferate and eventually form a tree with no centre. With a matted structure the tree spreads over a large area, creating a potentially infinite columned room.
The workshop will explore the current transition from the tree-like model which has dominated western culture from its origins, to the rhizomatic model which best fits the contemporary instances of complexity.
Through physical and digital models, we will develop an endless matted canopy as an opportunity to overcome conventional structural systems. Through a process of potentially infinite proliferations and adaptations to most diverse external stimuli, ideal structural types will dissolve into a field of variations: a vast array of contingency-driven material organisations open to accident and invention.
Component: metal rods. Structural type: branched.
