Architect:
ONL - Oosterhuis Lenard - Rotterdam
The WEB made a successful soft landing on the Floriade World Exhibition site in the Haarlemmermeerpolder in the Netherlands. The WEB is designed in the weightless space of the computer. First in the execution phase ONL unleashed gravity as an active force working upon the 3d model. ONL has sculpted the 3d model, sculpting the data of the kneadable substance (digital clay). A variety of techniques have been used: output using the milling machine, input with the 3d digitizer, modelling with a digital surface sculpting tool.
Started from the chosen sixfrequent icosahedron grid, ONL has invented a complete new constructive principle: a 3d triangular grid of flat and folded steel plates connecting the weighed normals (lines perpendicular to the surface of the nurbs model). ONL realized the hotline between the digital 3d model and the steel manufacturer Meijers Staalbouw. ONL wrote in-house an Autolisp routine which lifts the elements from the 3d model, places them on a reference plane, flattens them and attach the relevant data. Buckling points and angular rotations are administrated in a table (database). All elements are unique in shape and thickness. It is important to apply a transparent coding system for production and assembly purposes. In this process the 2d drawing plays no role. It is a File to Factory process where the digital 3d model of the designer communicates directly with the programmable cutting machines of the steel manufacturer.
Thanks to the invention of the folded 3d triangular grid of the steel construction and thanks to the elastic properties of the Hylite aluminum sheets ONL has been able to realize a body building which convinces as a spaceship. After functioning as a host for the interactive Noord-Holland propaganda the pavilion will be dismantled and reassembled in Delft. It will be prepared for its second life on a the location at the campus of the Delft University of Technology where it will function as the interactive designlaboratory Protospace for the Faculty of Architecture.
