ABSTRACT
The HygroSkin – Meteorosensitive Pavilion project was commissioned by the FRAC Centre in Orleans, France, for its renowned permanent collection, and was first shown in the ArchiLab 2013 exhibition. The material behaviour of wood and its structural complexity derive from its cellular build-up as a naturally grown tissue. The presented project continues the line of research and explores local elastic bending in the context of a modular construction system. The material’s high elasticity and structural performance allow the use of only 4mm thin plywood for all elements of the developed construction system. A robotic fabrication strategy is used to accurately trim each module to its required boundary. The developed robotic fabrication technique significantly influences the construction system’s design space, or morphospace, as it determines the producible module geometries in relation to the robot’s kinematic freedom. The interrelation between the modules’ possible geometric differentiation and fabrication parameters is a basic principle of an integrative architectural design approach.
