As part of the TEDx Brighton event that has recently taken place, I was part of a small team which helped build and design a temporary pavilion with a group of architects and designers and creative individuals called Threshold.

The main theme and title of the TEDx event was “The Generation Gap”.  The idea of the pop up pavilion was to encapsulate the public’s viewpoint on housing in the future.  The public were asked a series of questions in an event leading up to the TEDx event at abir’s offices.  These questions were along the themes of housing and how it may adapt and change in the future.

I began by meeting Leith Mackenzie and discussing what ideas he had about the design of the pavilion. We spoke about how it is going to be a modular system, with a Y shaped plan.  Then the elevations were going to feature different displays with different information on them.  The elevations were to include films, maps, post boxes, doors, housing types and a range of graphics that were later to be designed by Richard Wolfströme.

Here are some of the first image concepts from Leith.

We had previously spoken to millimeter a design and fabrication company based in new england house in Brighton.  They were very helpful and let us use their workshop, tools and space to build and construct the pavilion.  We began by visiting atimber merchant in Shoreham and purchasing nearly all the wood and materials we needed.

After purchasing all the wood we began by cutting them into exact lengths and then making the frames for the pavilion.  These did vary slightly but they tended to be quite simple dimensions so this process wasn’t too difficult.  This was mainly because of the initial drawings by Leith!

Cutting the gable ends on the band saw.

We had to construct two of the panels prior to the actual TEDx event as we wanted to interview members of the public on there opinions on the future of housing.  This was difficult as we were tried mounting just standard printed paper onto the corex sheets that we had acquired from Paul from chalk architecture.  This happened a week before the event and so we delivered the panels to abir’s office in Hove after our best efforts to mount them to the panels.

The event was a success with a range of opinions being gathered and valuable data that is going to be used in the final event in the corn exchange, Brighton.  The work is still being formatted but click here for the link when it is complete.

We then moved all the piece we had cut and made upstairs to unit E at the very top of new england house.  This was purely to assemble them and see if they fit together correctly and begin mounting some of the materials onto the elevations and gabel ends.

We then began by laying out the roof structure and seeing if our joinery was up to scratch, it seems to be working at this moment!

We put up the sides

Then mounted the corex onto them simply with staples and a scalpel.

Painted the gable ends.

INSERT STOP MOTION VIDEO HERE

We had completed the build and had timed it, it took roughly 45 minutes to erect it.  This was roughly the amount of time that we had to put it up.

The vinyl arrived the day before as the company we ordered it from had issues with delivering it and so we had to do all the vinyl in one very full day, and night!

Laying out the vinyl and trying to keep it clean and mounting it was a slow process!

Mounting the vinyl was difficult but after talking to Zoli from Exhibit printing he recommended different ways of mounting it.  We used washing up liquid and some window cleaning accessories to help us apply the vinyl to the corex.

This seemed to work well but we had a lot to do that evening and it was getting late and dark in the room we were working in.

After both of us staying up most of the evening we managed to get it all done and we borrowed millimeters van in the morning to deliver it to the pavilion.  Where we were met by the Threshold team to help us build it.

In the lift!

INSERT STOP MOTION OF TAKING STUFF OUT THE LIFT!

Click here  for a video of the construction of the pavilion inside the space from clickclickjim.

INSERT VIDEO OF STOP MOTION FROM ME

INSERT VIDEO OF APPROACH TO PAVILION

Image courtesy of Jim Stephenson, clicklclickjim

Image courtesy of Jim Stephenson, clicklclickjim

Image courtesy of Jim Stephenson, clicklclickjim

Have a look at the Storify from the TEDx Event here

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