The project is inspired by Frei Otto’s institute for lightweight structures in the 1970s. The structure is a public piece of art, a lightweight timber canopy meant for various purposes like meeting space, community gathering, recitals, open-air theatre/ performance area and is located in Hageby Sweden, and completed in 2019 and officially opened in September 2020. It was completed by a couple of different teams including Map13 Barcelona (architects), Summum Engineering (engineering and parametric modeling), and Edyta Augustynowicz (parametric modeling).
The pavilion is part of the community center in a neighborhood called Hageby in iNorrköping, Sweden. Portalen is an organization and center that welcomes new migrants to the city and helps with integrating them into the local labor market. This gridshell structure is 2200sqft. which is a lot bigger than what we are designing for but I got to look at the connection detail and how the gridshell was assembled on site.
The structure itself has two layers of timber laths in two directions forming the diagonal grid shell structure, it was built as a flat mat on the ground then lifted to form a 3D curved surface that works as the shell structure. It also uses steel cables for bracing the whole grid structure and then takes advantage of the transparency of polycarbonate cladding and at the same time the waterproofing elements of protecting the space underneath from rain.
By: Kenneth Alessandro
Works Cited:
Engineering, Summum. Vimeo, 8 Dec. 2020, https://vimeo.com/440360295. Accessed 11 Nov. 2021.
Map13. “Timber Gridshell: Map13 Barcelona.” Map 13 Barcelona, https://www.map13bcn.com/timber-gridshell.
Ott, Clara. “Portalen Pavilion / MAP13 Barcelona + Summum Engineering + Edyta Augustynowicz.” ArchDaily, ArchDaily, 8 Oct. 2020, https://www.archdaily.com/949152/portalen-pavilion-map13-barcelona-plus-summum-engineering-plus-edyta-augustynowicz.
“Portalen Pavilion: Map13 Barcelona.” Archello, https://archello.com/project/portalen-pavilion.
Timber Tectonics in the Digital Age 
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