AA DRL10 Pavilion

The Architectural Association commissioned a temporary pavilion in Bedford Square to mark ten years of its Design Research Lab. The international competition, open to graduates, asked for a temporary pavilion exploring the potential of glass-fibre-reinforced concrete panels. The jury selected this design for its central idea of a single flowing form running continuously from furniture to roof, its simplicity of detail and its constructability.

Designed in a collaboration with Alan Dempsey and Alvin Huang, the pavilion tests what those panels can do at just 13 mm thick. From a distance it reads as one continuous curved surface. Up close, that surface resolves into many discrete flat profiles of concrete and steel, intersecting to form a lattice that rises from the ground, arcs overhead and returns.

The thickened base provides seating, a stage and shelter while keeping the route through the structure open. Along the sunlit edge the steps face outward, and people sit looking onto the square and the AA. Under the canopy they curve inward, and small groups settle in the shade, where the lattice breaks the light into shifting patterns, and views open up to the park interior.

The making required intensive design research. Curved profiles were cut from standard fibre-cement panels and shipped to site. Digital modelling, physical prototyping and file-to-factory manufacturing managed over 850 uniquely shaped pieces and 3,000 joints of varying angles. The pavilion was assembled by hand by Design Research Lab staff and students as a live research project built by the researchers themselves.

A book documenting the project was published by the AA Press in 2009.