Yesterday was our interim crit. It came at us apace, wanting to eat us alive. Clearly I survived to tell this story, so what of it?

Our scheme for the project is best described with photos of the model:

Our pavilion has a narrative which one enjoys by passing through it. There are ingots, an attenuation passage, open air hall, auditorium main hall, inhabited roof, café and more. I will expand on this in time but for now will put forward ideas for structure. Hopefully you will agree it is no mean feat to hold up this complex building.

I should say that we went down a few routes, none of which felt comfortable.

And so fell back on using an irregular steel frame, which this unfinished model sort of shows:

Now we are thinking along the lines of a cellular Eurban inhabited roof structure supported on steel work as required. This is much more like it: I reckon the façade now works, is a natural response to that crazy model of John’s, and has scope for challenging detailing. Eurban, by the way, is like plywood but on a massive scale. For a start it is 80mm thick. It is like structural foam board. We would prefab our structural foam board panels with connections and cladding, ship over to Shanghai flat packed into containers, erect with temporary support structures. It is fairly straight forward how the cellular structure resists the forces but the complexity of the structure is a challenge construction, for which we were pulled up on. We were not challenged on the analysis of it although I was half prepared. And surprisingly we were also pulled up for using so much timber on the grounds of sustainability. “Just how many hectares of forest would have to be trimmed to supply your timber?” asked Max Fordham.

As an aside, my slappa finally arrived today! Yeah!