Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin held a design competition for a temporary entrance to its bamboo garden this summer, and the solution is so ingenious that it has been extended. According to ID magazine's June 2005 issue (also the source for the image seen here; article not available online):
Created by the Zurich-based architecture firm, Instant... the surprisingly strong, see-through structure consists of inflated stairs leading to an enclosure cantilevered over an 18th-century lane in the formerly communist east. The Kunst-Werke occupies 18th- and 19th-century buildings, so the contest brief was rigid. "It called for no screws, no nails," says 33-year-old Dirk Hebel, cofounder of Instant with Jorg Stollmann. "So? Inflatable."
Most of the design is made of fiber-reinforced PVC foil. To support the weight of people on the balcony, Hebel and Stollmann hired engineer Mauro Pedretti, who has patented a load-bearing system he calls Tensairity. It's based on Tensegrity, the principle behind Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes, in which a minimalist steel-and-cable structure can support itself in a compression and tension system.
The interaction between the existing structure/historical provenance of the buildings and the ingeniousness of the solution seems quite brilliant. What do you think?
Related links:
ID: The International Design Magazine
Kunst-Werke Berlin e.V. - Institute for Contemporary Art
"Inventioneering Architecture" - a talk given by Dirk Hebel and Jorg Stollman at the California College of the Arts in October 2005, concerning the application of "the details of small-scale objects to the design of larger structures."
The "Special Structures" section of the Passera Pedretti & Partners Ltd website
The Buckminster Fuller Institute
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