A striking building designed to have the smallest environmental footprint, the 2013 Brighton University graduate pavilion has a reciprocating grid structured roof – a low-tech intervention designed to enable just about any low-skilled worker to prefabricate and then erect the building.
The greatest challenge lay in sourcing materials, according to the team’s design brief. While a great deal of the timber used was recycled, the team had to “quarantine” some materials received from contractors because their quality was insufficient for a stable structure.
“There is a point to be made about the difficulty in obtaining large amounts of sheet timber from the construction industry – it seems to be used and used again as hoarding until it has little structural integrity – this is good practice from the contractors but not so helpful for local initiatives like ours.”
+ Brighton University
Images via Jim Stephenson
