vide formwork for panels.These trampolines are stretched horizontally over boards arranged to create patterns. Concrete is then poured onto the trampoline mould, which bulges under the weight. It sets and then is lifted off. Panels cast in this way can also be used as moulds for casting lightweight structural shell panels. West’s fabric-formed structures are irregular and organic, not bound by traditional rectilinear timber and plywood formwork. Different fabrics create different textures, and excess water and air escape through the weave, minimising imperfections in the finished surface. Ushida Findlay explores fluid forms with a variety of materials, using both traditional and new technologies.Their forms also find their own logic, but through architectural manipulation of both program and material.Their palette includes concrete, tiles, bamboo, thatch, bush grass, and stretched Barrisol (a manmade fabric).To Ushida Findlay, each project is unique and solutions must not be bound by
conventional construction techniques.The firm has produced a wide variety of buildings from commissions to competitions, including a number that can be classified as hairy , including green-roofed Soft and Hairy House in Tokyo, the thatched-roof Poolhouse in Sussex, and the undulating brushwood 1009 Footpath. Other projects with pure, curvilinear forms include Kashara, steel ribbon desks in a London office re-fit and the Truss Wall house. In Truss Wall, Möbius-strip bands of concrete trusses wrap around the building and smooth, interlocking paving stones for the courtyard used balloons as formwork.Typical of Ushida Findlay work, the house is a combination of techniques. Construction and Calculation Construction that is linked to forms of calculation, and production that dates from the industrial era, are based on the linear milling of materi- als. Industrial processes produce planar units with ease and speed making rectilinear components and buildings easier and cheaper
Ushida Findlay’s Hasahara House
Bien que leur travail ne soit pas explicitement écologiste,West et Findlay se préoccupent tous les deux de questions envi- ronnementales. Pour sa part, le cabinet Ushida Findlay fait appel, dans la mesure du pos- sible, aux gens de métier et à la main-d’œuvre locale. L’approche environnementale de West est moins évidente,
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