Green Building Weave

Added : 12 Aug 2010 | Visits : 214869 | Average votes : %

Conceptual (0)
Process (0)
Design (7)
All (7)

Images
Videos

Greece-based architectural firm dARCH Studio showcase a collaborative venture ‘Papercut’ with the fashion designer Yiorgos Eleftheriades to face-lift a fashion store using corrugated packaging cartons.

Fashion vistas are the new realm that is exploring sustainable avenues by forging creative exchanges within brands and contemporary architecture. Designers are discovering the synergies between architecture and fashion through techniques of pleating, stapling, cutting and draping from traditional tailoring to designing buildings that are flexible, interactive, inflatable and even portable. Devising an eclectic inventive style with a touch of stagecraft to it, Greece-based firm dARCH Studio has refurbished a fashion store ‘YEshop in house’ articulating cardboard sheets. The project is a thoughtful site strategy conforming to the client’s requirements. Comprising of an exhibition space, lounge area, party space and an area for small scale fashion shows, the 90sqm ‘in house’ shop had to be contrived as a cohesive profile.

The starting point of this renovation stemmed from the resourcefulness of the architects to build on the client’s ephemeral requirements. Fashion and Architecture —both disciplines remain rooted to the basic task of enclosing space around the human form. Shadowing this thought, the architect’s concept plays with the same spatial framework of imagery and techniques as a designer’s way of creating garments by studying the anthropometrical aspects of a human body. The approach was formulated by repurposing hand-made paper and corrugated cartons into architecture. Expressing an idea that was rooted in sustainability, the interiors are made by recycling 1500 sheets of corrugated cartons in combination with 2000 blueprint patrons (horizontal sections of the curved parts) and low cost OSB wood into walls, displays and sittings. The existing furniture was arranged in a multi-utilitarian way, in order to bring forth the two new constructions.The walls, a crucial element of the design, were viewed as singular syntheses as they weave the space into a homogeneous entity. The southern wall ‘Synthesis 1’ is draped in 5mm thick corrugated carton in stripes. The corrugated side of the carton is exposed as the front finish implying the furniture to be a visually unified with the wall. Accentuating the open spatiality, the massive units are mounted on the walls, wherein the tables dually function as lightings, the bookcase as a coffee table stand and display case. Intensifying natural light and facilitating a free circulatory space, the metallic hangers spiral out in a radial composition. ‘Synthesis 2’, the eastern wall is outfitted with a fluid connectivity of corrugated carton sheets display, responsive to ‘Synthesis 1’. As a human body is adorned with accessories, the wooden rectangular displays are niches within the biomorphic mass highlighted by built-in concealed soft lighting. The curves in the cardboard trace the human body profile enabling a relaxed posture in the seating. The layered wall configurations act as transposing components that modulate the space into a visually interesting element. The whole existing area unfolds into a new experience owing to the interplay of materials, value and texture. The project, a challenging prospect of an experimental adventure with paper, renders a sculpturesque mood to the place.