‘Sueños con Earth/Concrete, Fiber/Timber’ installation in Mexico

 

A participatory, architectural installation featured in the Mextrópoli Architecture and City Festival unfolds stories about Mexico City through four materials, their provenance, and their promise for the future. ‘Sueños con Fiber/Timber, Earth/Concrete’ is a site-responsive structure that recognizes the palimpsest of the city’s histories and imagines new possibilities, through a critical adaptation of traditional papercraft, creative reuse of recycled wood, and innovative use of earth and concrete. The engineering team at Digital Structures MIT develops a pavilion applying 3D-printed structural elements in partnership with New Story, an international non-profit organization that pioneers solutions to end global homelessness, and Échale, a social enterprise based in Mexico that offers housing solutions through the integral development of communities.

site-responsive pavilion in mexico merges traditional papercraft, 3D-printing + recycling
images by Dinorah Schulte unless stated otherwise

 

 

pavilion applies 3D-printed clay blocks between concrete beams

 

‘Sueños con Earth/Concrete’ explores the future of affordable housing in Mexico by minimizing the material impact of existing construction methods. The pavilion develops a horizontal roof structure that takes the existing ‘vigueta y bovedilla’ (joist and vault) system as a starting point, optimizing the shape of the precast reinforced concrete beams to reduce the use of material and its associated environmental impact by 50% compared to conventional systems.

 

The elegant geometry, sculpted by varying width and depth along the beam’s span, is enabled by recent computational design methods developed in the MIT research department. 3D-printed clay blocks vault between beams as lost formwork that enables the casting of a topping slab manufactured by MANUFACTURA and ANFORA Studio. The use of tepetate, a local soil with high contents of clay, allows for fabricating compressed, sun-dried blocks that constitute the pavilion walls. This affordable, low-carbon solution, which has been successfully applied in the construction of housing communities around Mexico for more than 30 years, is reinterpreted with a post-tensioning system that allows for assembly and disassembly. The site-responsive installation lies at the intersection of local construction techniques and new digital fabrication technologies, resulting in a collaboration between industry, social enterprise, and academia as a model toward a more sustainable built environment.

site-responsive pavilion in mexico merges traditional papercraft, 3D-printing + recycling
3D-printed clay blocks vault between beams as lost formwork

site-responsive pavilion in mexico merges traditional papercraft, 3D-printing + recycling
the elegant geometry is sculpted by varying width and depth by computational design methods developed at MIT

 

site-responsive pavilion in mexico merges traditional papercraft, 3D-printing + recycling
the outdoor pavilion utilizes the existing concrete structure and 3D-printed elements | image by Arturo Arrieta

site-responsive pavilion in mexico merges traditional papercraft, 3D-printing + recycling
interactive installation under the clay roof structure | image by Arturo Arrieta

site-responsive pavilion in mexico merges traditional papercraft, 3D-printing + recycling
the site-responsive structure was featured in Mextrópoli Architecture and City Festival | image by Arturo Arrieta

pavilion - Digital Structures MIT
the horizontal roof structure optimizes the shape of the precast reinforced concrete beams | image by Arturo Arrieta

pavilion - Digital Structures MIT
the process of 3D-printing clay blocks in the MIT lab

pavilion - Digital Structures MIT
the use of tepetate, a local soil with high contents of clay, allows for fabricating compressed, sun-dried blocks

pavilion - Digital Structures MIT
3D-printing sculpts blocks of varying width and depth with clay made by local soil

 

 

project info:

 

name: Sueños con Earth/Concrete / Sueños con Tierra/Concreto
designer: Digital Structures MIT 

collaboration: MANUFACTURA + ECHALE + NEW Story

featured in: Mextrópoli Architecture and City Festival (September 21-25, 2022)

location: Mexico, North America

photography: Dinorah Schulte – Arturo Arrieta

 

 

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

 

edited by: christina vergopoulou | designboom