Climatic Chamber - ’The Sea Creature with The Soft Inner Core’
- A climate chamber research project by four architect students at The Bergen School of Architecture – Marius Næss, Trine Stunner, Jan Tore Kristoffersen & Karla Lesley Jaeger. How to build a climate chamber using waste materials, leftovers, wrong-ordered materials and the craftsmanship and ten weeks’ labour of four architect students.
Step by step:
Week 1: Driving around in Bergen, calling firms, visiting building sites and asking if they have any left over materials, collecting the materials. In our case we ended up with bathroom tiles, wood, many types of wood and different shapes of and improper woollen socks. Bathroom tiles are our main material, and we start discussing to which degree bathroom tiles can work as a constructive material.
Week 2: Organizing all the different materials. What do we have? What is it’s potential? What is realistic to do and what is not?
Week 3: We enter ’Another World’ (DAV) by making a pinhole camera, painting on 3x3 meter paper formats with our entire body and experimenting with one specific material in relation to temperature, water and our own body in the space. Subconsciously our project reaches a new awareness.
Week 4: Discussing shapes. How can the materials we have help us shape our construction? How can the surroundings of our site the outer context be connected or linked to these emerging shapes and us?
Week 5: We draw, discuss, draw more, and draw together. We also discuss the different spaces, the climatic differences. How many layers do we need? How can we incorporate the warm inner core into our resistant, rough shell?
Week 6: Start building: In our case an arch, two arches become four, four become six, now our construction is solid and ready to be further investigated.
Week 7: Our construction needs a new material to strengthen our suspension of cladding, in our case bathroom tiles. We need to find fishnet. One phone call and fishnet is found!
Week 8: We draw more, discuss more and cover our ’half-an-egg-shape-six- arch-construction’ with fishnet, a layer of plastic to protect the soft inner core and then a new layer of fishnet. We think these three layers are responding beautifully to the light.
Week 9: We now start cladding our construction with bathroom tiles. This week our ’inner room’ (the inner core) comes to life too. A ’hammock like’ construction on the inside becomes our safe shelter. This too is made of fishnet, hovering and gently rocking above the ground surrounded by a welcoming layer of newspaper-filled woollen socks that the body can nestle into.
Week 10: We finish our construction. During this week the project’s program and process was in focus. We worked on our process – working drawings, plan and elevation drawings.
The Sea Creature with the Soft Inner Core has come to an end for now.
The surface is hard, a shell construction resistant towards weather, wind, the sea and other surrounding elements. Inside the shell you find safety, shelter, but on entering the inside of the sea creature, your vision of the surroundings is blocked. The light of the inside is diffuse and blurry, and maybe you have the feeling of being lost inside a hard and resistant shell’s soft inner core. You climb into the hammock hovering for a few seconds while you find your position of comfort among the surrounding stuffed woollen socks which you snuggle into to keep warm.