Creating lightweight translucent and self standing walls including an assembling system, based on parametric design

Flanders and the Netherlands were Guests of Honour at the Frankfurter Buchmesse 2016. The Cloud Collective designed the pavilion, which was inspired by perceptions of the similar landscapes of the Low Countries. The notion of horizon forms the foundation for the concept behind the pavilion, which is more of an experience than a structure. The central area in the guest-of-honour pavilion is vast and vacant, offering visitors a place to relax and escape the commotion of the book fair.

We designed the structures of the reusable walls and furniture to create different seating areas by stacking transparent polycarbonate panels as ‘bricks’ and connecting them by cables. Each wall has been designed as a free-standing structure, gaining its stability by the overall hook-shaped geometry. The stacking pattern and the panel dimensions are specially optimised adaptive to the shape of each wall. A parametric design tool has been developed to determine the optimal result in view of the various design parameters for the walls, such as shapes, thickness, height, angles, openings and pattern density of the panel layers.