TAB 2019 announces the winner of the Installation Program Competition
Gwyllim Jahn, Cameron Newnham (Fologram) + Igor Pantic + SoomeenHahm Design
Huts and Habitats
The 5th Tallinn Architecture BiennaleTAB 2019 has announced the winning proposal for the TAB 2019 Installation Program Competition “Huts and Habitats”. The open two-stage competition invited emerging architectural talents to design an experimental wooden structure in the heart of Tallinn, considering new technologies in relation to Estonia’s rich history of timber construction.
The jury selected “Steampunk” by SoomeenHahm Design, Igor Pantic and Fologram, from among 137 submissions from around the world.
“The winning project challenges the idea of the primitive hut – showing how, by using algorithmic logic, simple raw materials can be turned into a highly complex and inhabitable structure”, asserts Gilles Retsin, TAB 2019’s Installation Program Curator.
As material expertise and traditional craftsmanship gradually succumb to the promises of bespoke design customization via CNCN machines and 3D printers, the team has focused on a hybrid approach that reinterprets the primitive tools of architecture from a contemporary perspective.
The result is a proposal for a pavilion made of steam-bent timber elements, using analogue tools augmented with the precision of mixed reality environments. It explores an adaptive design and fabrication system that is resilient to wide variations in material behavior and fabrication accuracy, occupying a fuzzy in-between that is neither purely analogue nor purely automated. “Steampunk” explores a path to rethink applications and traditions of craft in pursuit of their evolution.
“The winning entry consists of a bespoke merging of craft, immersive technologies and material performance, for the production of dynamic organic forms that surpass building limitations of local precision or of the pure automate. We are all excited and challenged to follow the emergence of such built work, which integrates lessons from nature and is the outcome of a vital human-machine collaboration”, states Areti Markopoulou, Head of the Jury.
The installation will be built in August 2019 in the lively pedestrian green area facing the Museum of Estonian Architecture and will open to the public during TAB 2019 Opening Week on September 11th, 2019.
The structure will remain in place until the next edition of the event in 2021.
