A second project is Tent Pile , 2013, a temporary entry pavilion for Design Miami. As architects in Miami are generally preoccupied with the fight against sand, a precarious foundation for building, Formlessfinder took sand as its starting point. T ent Pile shaded visitors under a vast roof that rested on the apex of a giant mound of sand. What appears to be structural magic is achieved with three interdependent elements: a half-tonne pile of sand (technically half a pile of sand), a retaining wall and a trussed roof that cantilevers off the top of the pile in two directions. While we intuitively know that grains of sand are heavy when accumulated, Formlessfinder leverages this property to use sand as a foundation. Alternate efficiencies both exploit the inherent attributes of various materials and expand the arsenal of materials available to the field. Building temporary projects with aggregate and other raw materials means that the materials can be shipped back to their local suppliers, a return to the continuum of construction materials rather than going to landfills.
Formlessfinder tested loose control in the original Bag Pile , a summer pavilion meant to provide shade, water and air in MoMA’s courtyard. They employed construction methods and a material palette usually used to stabilise the ground on which cities are built: sandbags and piles of rubble. With a team of engineers and local material suppliers, Formlessfinder made these sandbags and rubble into lumpy arches, columns and vaults. The constraints of such materials developed an architectural lexicon that could be used at many scales. One can imagine that the gravelly ground cover would record popular walking routes over time, a summer rain could be heard trickling through the voids between stones and at summer’s end the aggregate would be trucked back to the local supplier whence it came. When Peter Eisenman theorised ways in which the built object can position itself in relation to existing power structures at work, he used the term ‘strong form’ to describe iconic buildings with one-to-one relationships between their shape and what they represent, their fully-formed images often springing from an architect’s napkin diagram. Formlessfinder leans towards Eisenman’s description of ‘weak form’, which encourages an un-decidability between form and meaning to subvert the certainties of formal narratives and classification. For example, rather than a default to columns to counteract gravity and assert an image of stability, Formlessfinder deploys a pile of loose stones to support a roof – an aggregate structure indicative of an attitude willing to let gravity win, willing to let stones tumble into their natural angle of repose. This is so subtle compared to historical bombast that must declare its structural strength, rather than just letting material mass find its own stasis.
left: Bag Pile , MoMA, 2011 below and opposite: Tent Pile , Design Miami, 2013
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