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Project description from the designers:

Hexigloo is a fully parametrically designed pavillion resulting out of a 7 day workshop in Bucharest Romania organized by Tudor Cosmatu, Irina Bogdan, Andrei Raducanu, and guest tutuors Andrei Gheorge (Angewandte, Vienna) Alexander Kalachev (DIA, Dessau) and Bence Pap (Zaha Hadid Architects London) . 55 students participated in a week long workshop learning the basic principles of parametric design, and software, with the task to build in the second half of the week a human scale spatial installation. Out of 10 projects 3 got finally built using a laser cutter and longnight workshifts for the assembly of the parts.

HEXigloo represents a pavilion that’s based on a cellular honeycomb structure, applied on an igloo surface typology. From concept to the finite product, the process went through the following steps: mapping a hexagonal grid on a pre-modeled surface (14 rows + 14 columns – having 196 elements as a result), extruding the mapped hexagons on the Z axis in order to create a binding surface between the components. All the binding surfaces together add rigidity to the overall structure.

The main interest was focused on the interior space; therefore, the interior cells were offsetted and moved on the Z axis, perpendicular to the normal of the surface in the center of each mapped hexagon. The value of the offset is directly proportional with the distance between the centers of the hexagons and a predefined curvilinear attractor, while the perpendicular one is using the opposed value.
In order to produce the elements, unrolling each one of them was necessary. In order to unroll them we used a VB.NET script. Since the algorithm uses a general set of rules, the result needed a second check in order to optimize and find the best nesting place on the cardboard sheet. Approximately 2200 linear meters were cut at the laser cutter for this installation and it was made out of 6mm cardboard.
Two teams of participants were created in order to assemble the laser cut components: one that assembled the pieces in their three dimensional shape and one that stitched the components together in order to create the final overall structure. We subdivided the whole volume into subassemblies in order to make the job easier. The whole process lasted approximately 80 hours.

Students:
Alexandru Damboianu, Andreea Nica, Andreea Hriscu, Ana Maria Pop, Bogdan Samoila, Cristian Bohanita, Daniel Mitrofan, Irina Sargov, Ina Dumitriu, Mihai Pascalau, Oena Eremia, Sorina Simion, Teodora Raduca