Status

Completed

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Location

Kuwait City, Kuwait​

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Photographer

Houssam Flayhan

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While teaching in Kuwait University in the studio led by Dr. Hussain Dashti, Mohammed Makki from MSSM Associates has discovered that the University have invested very little into the implementation of parametric design, and consequently, parametric design tools, for students to use throughout its 5-year architecture program. As a result, introducing 4th year architecture students to tools that lead to completely new approaches to design was received by the students as both exciting as well as intimidating.

 

The course brief was to design and construct two 1:1 scale pavilions using either biomimetics, fractals or folding techniques as design systems. The students had to use Rhino and Grasshopper in their design process, however the software were not to be used only as modeling aids, but as design tools that would help develop their project.

 

The students designing Pavilion {6} were inspired by a cellular level connection joint found in sea urchins, a connection system very similar to finger joints. Unlike their classmates designing the second pavilion (Pavilion OV) whose inspiration was derived from a more poetic translation of the natural system studied; Pavilion {6} was directed primarily through the structural system adapted from the sea urchin.