
Final year students enrolled in Chelsea’s BA Interior and Spatial Design have been working on a project to deign a pavilion for the Ecobuild conference and convention. The requirements were that the pavilion must address issues of sustainability and must in some way incorporate surplus stock of the Speedo LZR Racer professional swimming suit, after the suit was banned by the Federation Ineternationale de Natation.
The students began by studying the material, taking apart the suits and looking at their specific form and construction. They tested the suits’ water resistance, repulsion and waterproofness and their capacity for tension and expansion through wrapping, stretching and tessellating.

The students began to evolve methods of deconstruction and reconstruction of the material through techniques such as sewing, braiding, weaving and knitting, extending their understanding of the properties of the material and how it could be used.

The students presented 19 different pavilion designs to representatives of Speedo and Ecobuild. One student project in particular, designed by Kristina Bernard was selected to form the design for the final project as well as the ideas and concepts presented by two other students, Chloe Waite and Prim Aphiphunya. This project would be built by thirty students and two lecturers from Platform 5 and will be displayed at Ecobuild.
Kristina’s design took the form of a pergola and aimed to blend the man made with nature by weaving living willow with the racer suits.

Chloe discovered that the suit material possessed qualities that could be used to create a living wall, by planting inside the suits and using its water resistant properties to hold water in.. Her research have been used to explore how the man made can be used to enhance the possibilities of the natural.
Prim found a technique by which the fabric could be woven with enough strength to support the weight of a person walking or sitting within the woven fabric. Her research will inform he design of the furniture within the pavilion.

For the staff and students at Chelsea the project of adapting material made by man for swimming contests, into a sustainable project of an architectural nature and been a challenging and enormously rewarding experience. It has renewed their questioning and made them consider the ways in which materials are used and adapted and reused in future work.
The new pavilion was given a new life after Ecobuild as it was donated to Charlton School, embodying the notion that something made by man and declared obsolete can be reused in an effective, purposeful and beautiful way.

The Platform 5 Ecobuild 2011 ‘Space of Waste’ team are:
Prim Anyaporn Aphiphunya, Kristina Bernard, Celine Bourd, Nafsikaa Guelle, Emma Harrison, Gabriel Hobby, Agata Holys, Yu Ikegaya, Jungkyu Kang, Lucy Kinyanjui, Su Jin Lee, Nadia Piroz,Samerah Rahimzada, Yuri Seo, Jessie Yu Ting Su, Lauren Tucker, Chloe Waite, Caroline Li Xin Choo, Dion Cox, Sophie Dunnage, Wezhu Gui, Jung Yeon Kim, Anton Bjorsing, Jaekwang Lim, Justyna Plata, Ainhoa Querejeta, Natasha Skerrit, Sunmo Yang, Carolina Caroa, Sara Bergman, Nicole Lamison.
Luke Walker & Joy Flanagan – Platform Leaders
Anne Prahl – Sustainable Design Consultant
More info at: http://platform-5.tumblr.com