“Brick-Topia“, an ephemeral project by the architects of the association Map13 Barcelona, was the winning project in the “Build-it” category at the International Festival of Architecture Eme3 held of June 2013 in one of the courtyards of the former factory Fabra i Coats. The proposal is the result of the academic research by Marta Domènech, David López and Mariana Palumbo, co-founders of the group.
The idea was based on a combination of the latest structural analysis and form-finding computational tools with traditional, cheap and effective construction techniques.
Brick-Topia pavilion is a vaulted structure made of brick using a traditional construction technique called “Catalan vault”. It is the result of innovation to fight against budget and time. This construction takes as a reference the prototype built by Philippe Block, Matthias Rippman and Lara Davis at the ETH Zurich, with which they demonstrated the reliability of “RhinoVault”, a plug-in for Rhinoceros, used to design the pavilion. It is a form-finding software, developed at the Block Research Group, that allows the design of compression-only vaulted structures when subjected to self-weight.
You can also take a look at video of the construction here!
All images credited to Map13, Manuel de Lózar and Paula López
