Wood Wide Wall’s design stems from another industrial product: finishes are made using plane timber profiles, ventilated facades or floors.
This project uses a sole industrial profile, produced by MakHolz, with a 19×115 section, sized in only three measures. The designing principle is based on the mere boards’ juxtaposition one over the other and all these boards together lean on the back on slightly bent laminated trestles, giving a different slope for each point of the wall.
The project results in a light horizontal texture with a changing transparency, depending on the observer’s position, that lets half-view of its bearing structure’s skeleton.
Since boards’s cut is even and they don’t come in different measures according to their positions, installation is extremely quick and the stand can change its shape and adapt it according to the specific space: trestles are placed freely with the only requirement to respect boards’ maximum length; moreover, they are joint using screwed in props – the only occasion when metal mounting points are used.
Boards are simply juxtaposed and the exceeding length is slid to the concave side of the corner, shaping areas which can be more or less visible. The wall, because of the boards’ regular spacing, can support any kind of tools, panels, audio and video technology, lights.
Like for the MADE exhibition stand, these elements were designed using off-the shelves industrial products, making only few adjustments based on the leading optimisation principle. Size, storage, transportation and installation reproduce building timber’s industry production’s consolidated and optimised habits and practices.
The application of this method from the small to the middle scale, from an exhibition stand to a house, comes almost naturally: the main need is to improve the design, reinforcing the connections between architecture and industrial production. [Davide Mantesso, Contemporary wood, Experimenting sustainability and small scale resources’ optimization: two exhibition stands’ projects, in Paesaggio Urbano | Urban Design, #5-6.2012]
Carlo Bughi | Architect 