AN INVITATION TO SYMBIOSIS
A BIOSPHERE CONSTRUCTIVE APPROACH
The Biosphere Collective
Eduardo Padilha, Fernanda Liba, Miguel Croce & Sofia Boldrini
Project Selected for the Stage Two of Basel Pavillon 2022, The First Reused Component-Sourced Pavilion from Basel
A programme of Architekturwoche Basel.
FICTIONAL MEMORIAL
On a planet in constant rotation, there is a community of humans inhabiting the ruins of its ancestors who, a long time ago, used to cultivate a pile of debris that grew restlessly: it was called Progress. After some centuries came the day that Progress grew to a point that life itself was threatened and everything became a wasteland and there was no option, they needed to reinvent themselves.
It happens that the last survivors were living in a place called Dreispitz where they found, in the ruins, an old component catalog. This artifact was the key to deciphering all those strange things thrown around the area that used to be the ancient Villa Basilea. Since then they developed a curious way to build their homes. Like Archeologists, by excavating the material past, they started to imagine new ways of organizing architectural processes.
How materials enhance the design.
Because they know that every lifetime nourishes something new, they realized that already-used-by-humans materials, such as the ones employed in the constructions of the once imponent buildings, are still brand new if looked at from the point of view of other living beings. The byproducts of one are nutrients and substrates for another, in a continuous cycle. There is no room for permanent waste: what used to be called residue becomes nourishment and food. (This implied that the new material culture had to allow energy and matter to flow. Not hermetically sealed like the buildings designed by ancient architects, but permeable and penetrable to nature in all its strength and livingness.)
Activating transformations and dialogues in Dreispitz
The plan: reactivate a former industrial area in a sustainable way, transforming it into a multi-purpose place that would generate no waste. Like an "imaginarium-seed" dispositive for the community, it should nest and gestate the ideas for the future neighborhood of Dreispitz. What for? To co-create, out of the post-industrial landscape, public spaces able to shelter experiences of proximity with nature, where encounters could happen.
Relation to location and people, space and program
We need to stimulate the rebirth of life in a place designed to be sterile, such as train tracks. Therefore, the first act is to revolve earth. This creates a new topography with walkable paths and hills, a small waterway, liberating seeds, and sprouts asleep on the ground, similarly to what earthworms so naturally do. Then, with natural forces already in motion in the whole place, the second act will be the installation of conventional wood and steel workshops, protected by the garage roof. Students of arts and crafts techniques will be able to participate in the construction, making the building site also part of the program and an educational tool.
Now, the railway junction will be more than a place of passages and encounters of goods and people: it will host passages and encounters of ideas and desires for the future area. With the load transfer in place,a new community center will be built, composed of 2 pavilions, transforming a retracting point into a gravitational center of life. One is circular and the other, rectangular-corridor shaped. The first marks the place in the landscape with a flag on top of it and it is called Circus, the other named Nest is composed of garden walls, mushroom walls and bird nests.
A Circus and a Nest
The Circus is a covered circular place perfect to host activities like speeches and community congregation or other events that may happen. Its perimeter is 2.4m high and 4,5m at the highest point in the center, and its diameter is 7 meters (close to the support watching tower). The wireframe structure is made out of welded iron table legs and its shelters are former sail textiles, preventing hot sun and average rain. The assemblage is designed as a structural system in a way that allows it to be dismantled and rebuilt in the near future. The furniture is composed of benches and tables made of wood sourced from demolition.
The Nest works as an immersive space through which one can delve deeper and contemplate the multiple possibilities the pre-existing materials offer. It is at the same time a place-experience and an experiences’ place. A narrow corridor that is made to expand our perception about life cycles and nature, both a catalog of material and biological possibilities. A passage that is 2.3 meters high and 23 meters long, and at its halfway one of the walls is missing, opening passage to an adjacent deck projecting itself over the water body that spreads its meanders in the area. The structures are composed mostly of wood boards, providing good inertia for species to thrive.
To make this landscape visible there is a simple platform measuring 5x10m, positioned as the pivot of these two elements. It organizes the space and allows observing the pavilions as an event. From it, it is possible to see both the "wall of life" and the humans gathered together in inspiring discussions.
Life-cycle
From the ecological point of view, the platform enables the successful transition from sterile wasteland to biodiverse gardens. The materials employed serve as shelter, substrate, and food for the other-than-human organisms of the region. It not only provides the conditions for growth and reproduction but serves as a model for ecological succession (material and symbolic).
Thus, time plays an important role in the life of the pavilions, making them each time more suitable for more beings to be welcomed by their structures. The different species invited to inhabit the architectural structure have very particular requirements in terms of the conditions necessary for them to thrive. We studied the species in the region and selected those who are key in this process (they are described in the calendar). This exemplifies the possibilities of restoring biodiversity that had been lost by the intense urbanization processes carried out previously.
During the months that will follow, the two structures should host events and promote workshops based on a hands-on approach, about local food and culinary within the invisible world of microbes, mushrooms, and locally foraged plants. On some special days, it becomes a restaurant. We talked to some people active in this movement who helped us shape the possibilities for activities, and propose a program for each month. With the furniture, it is the perfect place to contemplate and relax in the sun, close to the presence of water.
End is beginning
At the end of the life of the pavilions, they are dismantled in a rite of passage that represents the full integration of the constructions and their products with the community in order to avoid producing waste. We start by reactivating the same workshops:
1. The modules of the Nest will become boxes that can be taken home for planting a garden with the plants that were part of the structure.
2. The Circus is disassembled and stored and can be used in the future.
3. The tent of the Circus turned into clothing and bags.
4. The mushrooms produced in the pavilion will be eaten in a ceremonial event that represents how the pavilion can even become a part of our own body.
Like a living being, it produces oxygen, absorbs carbon, fixates nitrogen, purifies water, creating an environment where generations gather, in a symbiotic invitation for a possible future.
Epilogue: Biosphere approach
As in any ecosystem, the beings appear according to the capacity of the context to receive them and provide for their needs. This is why the project started essentially with producers. Plants. Photoautotrophic, capable of producing their own energy from sunlight and inorganic ingredients, represent the first ones capable of colonizing the construction. Clay tubes as a shelter for bird nests and bee hives. Sawdust from the construction site as the substrate for edible mushrooms. Not only do trophic levels increase but the complexity of the system is also enhanced.
As biomass increases, there is each time more species and the buildings become more and more suited for specialists, including native endangered species such as the birds Vanellus vanellus and Charadrius dubius. As producers grow and reproduce, the bigger the biomass of the system, and the more suitable the conditions for other non-autotrophic beings to colonize as well.
STRUCTURE
Circus
Uprights made of welded steel will be fixed on the transfer base. The side beams will be placed on top of them. In the center 2 aluminum tubes of 35mm in diameter will be stacked and filled with local stones to create weight and cohesion. Steel cables will be fastened at the vertices of the circle, at the ends of the tubes and to the ground. The cables act in tension, while the other elements in compression and flexion. On top of this structure, two Sails will be sewn together to create a cover.
Nest
The basic structure of the nest works as a 22.5m bookcase < nao entendi>, using Wooden Planks of 5 and 2.5m. Wooden Slats are used laterally in the longitudinal direction. While in the latitudinal direction we use the same system of cables tensioned to the ground connected to 8 Lattice Structures. This increases compression on the final object, creating greater structural cohesion.
We consulted Gustavo Rosa, a structural engineer from Brazil specialized in wooden structures, and he performed for us a Global Stability Analysis, Axial Force, Structural Deformation Diagram Under Simplified Wind Loads, of the two proposals to be sure that this is a possible structural system.
