courtyard design build

A faceted land­scape with an array of pos­si­bil­i­ties for con­gre­gat­ing, per­form­ing, teach­ing, eat­ing and sleeping.

This project was designed and built by my Grad­u­ate Col­lab­o­ra­tive Design Build Class that I taught at Berke­ley in Spring 2010. Funded by a 8K grant from The Beat­rix Far­rand Fund. For more images, check out this project on the Open Archi­tec­ture Net­work.

Process
Our solar stud­ies revealed that sun­light is scarce in this sunken north-facing court­yard, which had been appro­pri­ated mostly as project stor­age and garbage area by grad­u­ate stu­dents. Our response ele­vates users up off the ground, offer­ing a vari­ety of posi­tions to con­gre­gate and enjoy the sun. We sal­vaged an exist­ing grape vine and incor­po­rated it into the project as a sub­tle canopy of dap­pled shade when the sun is high­est and brightest.

Con­struc­tion
This project is made of 100% recy­cled red­wood from Green Waste Recy­cle Yard. The steel frame is welded to exact dig­i­tal spec­i­fi­ca­tions by weld­ing over the full scale plots of each cus­tom rib joint. The wood infill is a replace­able panel-system of 2″ x 3″ x 4′ red­wood boards.

Spon­sors: Green Waste Recy­cle Yard and The Beat­rix Far­rand Fund.