Made By Me Pavilion

We are a team of visual artists who have made temporary and permanent public art and architecture, interactive installations, play sculptures and video/sound light installations. Our aims are to : Create a hub and gathering place - a structure that sits between architecture and sculpture, inspired by and in collaboration with children. It will draw on the rich history of pavilions in Glasgow and the Great Exhibitions and will be informed by our ongoing research of contemporary children’s centres and pavilions worldwide. Over the next 9 months we will be investigating form and function and experimenting with methods and materials for scaling up to life size. Follow us, join us - post your ideas, images, comments and questions.

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The term Kindergarten (children’s garden) was coined by the German Pedagogue Frederich Froebel. Interestingly Froebel studied for two years under a crystallographer, which informed his belief that “a child’s development should proceed by learning to observe, reason and create through the sacred language of geometry” (Century of the Child MOMA)

Geometry has been central to all the developments in this project but particularly important to the ongoing idea for a Stargazing Pavilion. I love how you can chart a point in the sky using simple triangulation methods or trace invisible lines through stars to find Taurus or Sagittarius.

The stargazer would be a different type of kindergarten a collective journey into the wild and up into the universe. This Design for a reasonably portable stargazer has already morphed into something quite different but there are parts of this design I still like. It is constructed so you can sit inside or lie on the roof and it can fold into different configurations.

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My Bush- this was my bush as a kid. I hollowed it out and had rooms inside. I made a fake door from another part of the bush to make the bush look solid, so that it would stop teenagers drinking in it.

 Over the years we have had a lot of conversations about children’s freedom to roam. Encompassing the importance of the authority of children to create their own worlds, play that is separated from and unmediated by the adult world and the attraction of derelict, wild and unmanaged sites.

An ongoing dilemma I have with creating this work for children is the constant realisation that raw materials and “non objects” hold more appeal for their imaginations and space to invent and also how discovery has more potential when it is unmediated. How do you create a pavilion or any interactive work that isn’t already too closed and finalised in its potential?

 “Today’s children are enclosed in school and home, enclosed in cars to shuttle between them, enclosed by fear, by surveillance and poverty and enclosed in rigid schedules of time.” Since the 1970s the area in which children roam without adults has decreased by almost 90%. “Childhood is losing its commons.”

 This article made me think about these notions on a larger infrastructure level and how we plan and regenerate our urban environments.

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I have been working a lot with polypropylene as a flexible and versatile material that is semi-translucent.However, I have reservations about the tactile qualities of it and theenvironmental impact of plastics in general. Whilst I was pondering the qualities I desired versus functionality, interactive potential and wearability, I came across this Pecha Kucha by Izumi Saito. 

It is about these little houses her father built using traditional Japanese building techniques. I love the simplicity of them visually and functionally and the use of channeled light through such a solid structure. They have an inflexibility and permanence that isn’t so compatible with my concept of transformable structures but there is transformability inherent in the materials I think.

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Japanese studio Tetsuo Kondo Architects and environmental engineering firm Transsolar have built the pavilion that I was almost dreaming of!. It encapsulates a cloud inside the centre of the cube, using carefully controlled varying humidity layers. Alongside this beautiful use of natural elements, I am particularly interested in the structure which uses lightweight poles and vinyl that can respond to changing wind.

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I have been thinking about turning some of my folding experiments into a book, to encapsulate the idea of potential and transformation. Here are some beauties.

(from left to right top to bottom: richard of york, multiple plans, A cloud Katsumi Komagata, Hippopposites Janik Coat, "Little Eyes" Katsumi Komogata, House Olafur Eliasson, The Shape of Time by Anastasia Tarana, Treehouse Marije Tolman & Ronald Tolman)

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Here are some initial experiments into making a book. I like the idea of creating a book with no specific narrative, either written or visual, but that opens up the possibilities of landscapes and worlds through colour and shape.

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I've been working with a company to CNC cut some of the folding shapes to give hinges with more friction. Here is a sneak preview

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http://issuu.com/georgekarampelas/docs/thesis_georgioskarampelas?e=0/10566126

I saw this thesis on the use of computational design tools and digital fabrication in small-scale wooden structures at the Glasgow school of art. A really interesting project, that relates to my ideas for the stargazer. I particularly like the exploded isometric diagram of the timber structure.

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I am experimenting with the folding wedges to try and find a way to lock them together when they are closed. I have designed the shape of the  outside flaps to lock into each other. Next is to make them in a more robust material and think about the hinging again, it always comes back to the hinges!

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I had the opportunity to visit the Bernard Tschumi exhibition Concept and Notation at the Pompidou Centre. It was a very interesting exhibition, and the work that excited me the most was his concept based works and early styles of executing exciting architectural drawings. His work not only has parallels with Made by ME but there were a number of inspiring things for me to ponder for this stage of our research project.

His use of narrative as a starting point for architecture. (Image 1. Joyce’s garden). This is a process we have often used when working with children in projects such as Shelter form the Storm and something I would like to revisit.

Movement - social interactions and activity as driving forces for architectural conception and design (image 2 Manhattan Transcripts). This is something I think children are more naturally attuned to.

Film and scenic composition as architecture (Image 3 screenplays).Exploring the relationship between events and architectural spaces. When designing pavilions the ‘events’ or purpose either seem to get lost or a particular event is the focus. We are looking to a transformable pavilion for different events and looking at the specificity and essence of each activity and how it translates into a structure.

Tschumi’s ways of executing architectural plans, drawings and concepts (image 4 ,5,6 ). He incorporates the elements of movement and activity and also produces drawings and prints that conceptualise the textures and feelings of the buildings and their materials.

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De Re Aedificatoria (Installation for Glasgow International at the Pipe factory).

Thoughts of the brain are experienced by us as arrangements and rearrangements - change - in a physical universe; but in fact it is really information and information-processing which we substantialize. We do not merely see its thoughts as objects, but rather as the movement or more precisely, the placement of objects: how they become linked to one another. But we cannot read the patterns of arrangement; we cannot extract the information in it - i.e. it as information, which is what it is. The linking and relinking of objects by the brain is actually a language, but not a language like ours (since it is addressing itself and not someone or something outside itself).

  Journal entry #37

Philip K. Dick, Valis

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Apologies, there hasn't been a lot of activity on the blog for a wee while. Made by ME have been busy collaborating with Home for architectural Recreation to build an installation for Glasgow International festival. We built an evolving installation at the Pipe Factory ( an amazing Renaissance style building on the edge of the Barrowlands market in Glasgow). The installation was part of the Bricolage programme of events and our exhibition morphed to house different events including a day of performance by Spelling Space and a backgammon tournament hosted by artist John Kellock. Pictures to follow.

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I have been doing some basic tests to make sleeve hinges that can be tightened to fix them in position. This would allow for easily changeable frames that would also have strength when fixed in position

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I have also been testing the velcro connectors with the fold-up wedges. They don’t have enough tension but they look good and the wedges can then be dismantled to make different shapes.

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I have been testing more ways to make nesting wooden frames. These could be used as interactive elements in themselves or as supports for folding ramp structures.

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Looking at using the Hi-ab/crane to lift the modular wedges that are already linked to one another. it could create possibilities for hinges areas that can be closed an opened, a flexible yet robust structure.

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We are looking at the possibility of using cranes, Hi-abs and pulleys to erect, transform and hold the structure. This would allow for flexible units to be held in a semi-rigid state.