carapace pavilion

The Carapace Pavilion is an award winning, built project located in Joshua Tree National Park, created as a prototype for a new bathroom design that would exist throughout the whole park. Beginning not only as a bathroom prototype, the Carapace pavilion is also a material prototype for the use of Ultra High Performance Concrete (UHPC) as a structural shell rather than just a façade treatment. The structure is an anticlastic structure with five panels all cast out of one mold. A graduate student working on this project had centered his thesis upon creating a structure as such, therefore generating a Grasshopper script that could adjust the design of the shape, whether it be turned anticlastic or synclastic, have larger or smaller openings, et cetera. The shape is essentially three circles aligned at midpoint, with the outer two having the same dimension and the inner one designed to be adjusted in size.
Furthermore, the team determined the thickness of the UHPC to be a minimum of 2.5 inches while still being structural; therefore, the panels are extremely thin towards the center and thicken to about 6 inches at the edges. Each cast is attached with X-connectors by JVI. One half of the connector is cast into one panel and the other into the connecting panel, which on-site at installation time get welded together.

The team examined, not only the possible shape of the structure, but also its texture and apertures. Working with a group of structural engineers, it was determined that adding apertures to the wall panels could lower the structural integrity, as opposed to adding those apertures to the edge of the roof where the cantilever was would make the load lighter. We created a shape that gradated both in size and amount. Because only the roof panels have apertures, the cast had to be equipped with detachable foam block-outs for the apertures.

My part in the team was to deisng the shape and apertures, create graphics, and style the overall look of the pavilion. I created the design of the patch that attaches to everyone’s coveralls when working, created the apertures, defined the curve of the over hang, decided the color of the UHPC, as well as created the template and graphic style for a book. Along with another student, we ran the Media Team.