Seminar project under the direction of Toshiko Mori at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Spring 2005. Collaboration with Justin Cook, Dustin Stephens, Kristin Hopkins, Marta Morais, Daniel De Sousa, and Zhiyang Zhang.
Client: Swedish Trade Council
Completed: 2005
It's Always The Budget, Ain't It?
The problem of designing an indoor pavilion that highlights furniture is a curious one. Neither building nor furniture but in danger of mimicking the scale of both, the Swedish Pavilion was faced with the paradoxical demands of being a beacon from across the exhibition hall but disappearing when actually visited, so as to not distract from the experience of viewing the furniture on display. Furthermore, when the Swedish Trade Council approached Harvard to design the pavilion there was no manifest of objects to be included which further frustrated any attempt to design specific display opportunities. Being exhibited at the Javits Center in New York City complicated matters further by layering onto the project immense fees for any use of (unionized) labor. Oh, and as usual, there was almost no money available for the project.
Unlikely Confluences
Rather than propose a piece of gargantuan display furniture, the pavilion at ICFF is conceived as a temporarily displaced portion of Sweden herself, a little Swedish Cloud that has floated across the Atlantic. All of the objects in the booth are unified by the presence of this undulating cloud structure above and the unique light that is cast through it. Due to its height, the cloud becomes visible from quite far away but allows the ground plane to be freely organized for curatorial purposes.
The underbelly of the cloud was designed as a control surface, allowing us to carefully craft three separate zones at different scales that create a variety of display possibilities underneath. By seeking to minimize the material waste and cutting time, both significant factors in our budget, we developed a unique method of nesting the shapes of individual ribs so that two pieces are cut with one tooling-pass and there is zero material waste.
To avoid paying for union labor (which we could not afford) the project was designed qualify as a piece of signage under Javits Center rules (and thus allowing us to assemble it rather than requiring union assistance): it weighed less than 1lb/sqf, it required no tools to assemble thanks to a slot-tab system of interlocking joints, and it packed small and flat enough to be carried in through the front doors.
By strategically navigating loopholes in NYC labor laws, the exhibition requirements, and CNC toolpaths the Swedish Cloud came in under budget (barely!) and on time.