Sharon Yang Looking Outwards – 03

The project ‘Cloud Village’ has been developed by Philip F. Yuan and his team with digital fabrication technology. It is an outdoor pavilion was put together with a purpose to develop the rural areas in China without harming the nature and the people there. I admire not only the high elaborateness of the building but also the fact that it is made of recycled plastic material. As it is a severe environmental crisis in China especially in the countryside, it offers a highly sustainable solution to the issues in the Chinese rural areas.

In order for the pavilion to best suit its purpose of providing a public resting space for the residents in rural regions as well as obtaining a creative and an aesthetic presence, the form and the structure has been optimized by a use of topological optimization algorithm. Such a technological innovation allows for an architecturally innovative approach such as having a waved geometry as the roof. In the process of digital fabrication, the geometry of the pavilion is pixelated into various components to use a crystalized printing tool-path for each of them. The project therefore demonstrates the ideal incorporation of the computational generation to the design as well as the fabrication of art.