Wooden Foliage
Location
Ahmedabad
Year
2012
Type
Installation
Status
Completed
Client
SID CEPT University
Design Team
Rooshad Shroff, Jwalant Mahadevwala, Kanika Agarwal
IN COLLABORATION WITH andBLACK
One hundred cylindrical wooden elements, 7,000 wooden discs, 26,000 staple pins, a collective 384 man hours and three days in which to put it all together -- that would sum up this unique canopy, created at a CEPT University workshop in 2012.
Invited to participate alongside Jwalant Mahadevwala of andblack Design Studio as facilitators for the Space Making Wood Workshop, an initiative by the Design Innovation and Craft Resource Centre (DICRC), we were presented with a unique challenge; to design and execute a canopy using leftover components from a previous workshop within 72 hours.
The brief stated that we were to incorporate 100 tapering cylindrical wooden members, each two feet long and two inches in diameter, which had been previously discarded due to unaccounted-for weight. We decided to use them in the creation of a canopy that would contradict its inherent heaviness and move away from the linearity of the members, to create a surface showcasing the grains of the wood.
Our design called for a deconstruct of the members by slicing them, creating 70 cross sections from each. These helped us move away from the linear narrative, to obtain more surface area when they were joined together and rendering the final product fluid, light and flexible, unlike the original rigid form. Each unique cross section was then individually drilled with six holes along its perimeter, and stitched together using metallic staple pins to create a wooden fabric.
Displayed at the School of Interior Design (SID)'s main plaza within the CEPT campus, the canopy presented itself as 'wooden foliage' -- suspended between the trees, it melted into the natural surroundings and acted as a shading device, creating interesting shadow patterns on the plaza below.
