Tegamea.
Mathare, Kenya 2024.
With: Chen Xi Li
How can architecture create dignified, scalable, and sustainable living conditions in one of Nairobi’s most constrained informal settlements?
Tegamea.
Mathare, Kenya 2024.
With: Chen Xi Li
How can architecture create dignified, scalable, and sustainable living conditions in one of Nairobi’s most constrained informal settlements?
Tegamea.
Mathare, Kenya 2024.
With: Chen Xi Li
How can architecture create dignified, scalable, and sustainable living conditions in one of Nairobi’s most constrained informal settlements?
Tegamea.
Mathare, Kenya 2024.
With: Chen Xi Li
How can architecture create dignified, scalable, and sustainable living conditions in one of Nairobi’s most constrained informal settlements?
Bamboo Gridshells
Chonburi, Thailand.
With: Minori Kawakami
How can traditional materials like bamboo be re-imagined for modern architecture using digital and mixed-reality technologies?
The Bamboo Teahouse is nestled between urban traffic and the ocean of Chonburi, Thailand, and synthesizes the structural and aesthetic capabilities of bamboo as a natural material to become a semi-transparent, circulatory space of rest. This project began with an in-depth structural study on the behavior of bamboo under active bending conditions. By rigidly connecting bamboo strips to form a mesh, the material’s tensile and compressive strengths were studied physically and through Mixed Reality projections with Grasshopper and Pufferfish, from a flat grid to an active bending grid shell. This analysis allowed a fine-tuning of parameters such as grid density, anchor point location, and force points, optimizing the design for structural integrity. Ultimately, the result is a self-sustaining mirrored system in which opposite, interdependent grid shells are mutually enforcing this curvature to create interstitial occupied spaces.
The second part of the studio involved traveling to Bangkok, Thailand, where we consulted with experts in bamboo construction to deepen our understanding of material behavior and construction methods. We explored various bamboo species and their unique properties, which informed the design of a tea house. This structure was specifically designed to be built using the VR and MR workflow developed in the first phase. The process allowed for a seamless integration of digital design and real-world construction, where each bamboo component was digitally planned and assembled in real-time using holograms.
