Alchemy: Exhibit Columbus

The school was invited, with 5 other schools of architecture, to participate in the inaugural Exhibit Columbus Biennale, to be held in Columbus, Indiana. Each school was awarded a modest stipend to design and fabricate a pavilion for the August, 2017 opening. Our framework for the design problem focused on the use of Industrial Detritus- the leftover materials from Midwestern industrial production. 
A woven reclaimed wood-joist wall creates a womb-like space that frames a bejeweled tile room.  The reclaimed wood joists were imprinted with geometric patterns made from negative scraps of copper, and then sanded to reveal the impressions in the century-old wood.  Hundreds of patterns were created by Columbus, Indiana schoolchildren during a workshop hosted by our students. The wood is connected with delicate copper joints that are leftover profiles from an industrial component, routed into the wood and held with conduit staples. The tile room is composed of a double-curved steel armature with hundreds of handmade tiles that were rejected by a local tile manufacturer, held on the frame with thousands of handmade copper and stainless steel clips. The floor of the room is composed of scrap profiles of decorative limestone from an Indiana stone quarry. The base of both the wood wall and the tile room utilize “roughback” stone profiles, which are the natural, irregular surfaces of the stone that are considered waste when cutting flat slabs of stone. All work was built by students.