08. Made of Plattenbau

UC Berkeley Design Studio

Academic, 2022
Individual Work
Instructor: René Davids, Greg Castillo

Collected in Dessau Effect III | 2022

Part 1. KIOSK

Due to shrinkage and decay after unification, the city of Dessau has been demolishing prefabricated concrete panel buildings called Plattenbau that are abandoned or decaying and no longer needed. Rather than depositing the panels in landfills, this kiosk project recycles them as construction material.

Inspired by the Triadic Ballet, with its geometric representation of the human body, the panels are layered, cut, and re-assembled into an almost solid cube that is then notionally carved by the ballet's figures to form usable spaces. By re-enlivening the building technology, the kiosk dignifies people's memories.



Plattenbau
Panels
Panels

Study Model


Carved...
Box
= Space

Unfolded Elevations
Use of Recycled Panels



Part 2. PAVILION

The wood pavilion's main organizing structure is an elevated spine, built using the same technique of cutting into the layered Plattenbau panels used for the kiosk. The spine is the main exhibition space, designed as a virtual solid that is cut out to generate rooms and sub-rooms of different sizes - giving individual objects and drawings their own space, and providing visitors focused time to appreciate the exhibited work.

The rest of the program - classrooms, workshops, café, and artists' residences - is housed on the ground floor. Roofed with wooden rafters that are lowest toward the east and slope downward to the west, the pavilion offers different degrees of privacy. The workshop, for example, faces the road and lets passers-by observe the activity inside, while the café sits at the eastern end, where the tallest roof gives patrons a lofty, transparent space.



Serial Spaces
Axonometric
Study Model
Plan_Ground Floor
Plan_F2
Elevation

From One End of the Pavilion
Under the Pavilion
Study Model

Behind Scenes, with René Davids
René Davids

© Tianrong | Tina Wu