Wave Breaker. 3d-print Plastic Pavilion
The 3D-print Plastic Wave Breaker Splash, adjacent to the Donghai Bridge, aims to create a porous space resembling Chinese scholar stones based on minimal surfaces, allowing visitors to walk through wave-like artificial rock caves. The installation consists of 228 standardized 3D printed units, resembling wave breakers on the embankment. Each unit is 480mm high, in blue and green, nested and supporting each other, providing a novel and variable experience through modular units. The original plan was to use recycled plastic printing units and connect them all like LEGO bricks. However, due to the high cost of recycled plastic and the need for the installation to withstand winds of up to 12 levels by the sea, high-strength plastic was used instead, with steel frames embedded in the hollow cavity.
Lingang Coast Ecological Pavilions are three small structures of Shanghai Lingang Ecological Restoration Project, scattered along the 17-kilometer-long coastline. They serve as landmarks along the extensive shoreline, providing basic resting spots for citizens while also serving as eco-educational exhibits.
The design of pavilions considers three main aspects: how to create distinctive features and interest within the given site conditions and budget, how to occupy the space while avoid FAR, and how to integrate marine science themes into the form and material of the pavilions.
With a flat, open, uniform, prolonged landscape, Lingang coastline provides a surreal atmosphere different from Shanghai's daily scenery, with huge wind turbines, giant boulder-like wave breakers, and endless sea. This determined the basic strategy of the design: the pavilions would engage the site as follies, enhancing the site's surreal experience with alien volumes and materials. The pavilions would have no roof, expanding their spatial capacity through large enclosing walls, components as framework, and porous material distribution. Abstracting marine symbols and combining with environmentally friendly materials, the pavilions themselves aim to have educational significance from both visual and tectonic perspectives.
Considering the considerable distance and the lack of potential for them to be conceived as a cohesive group, three pavilions are designed as individual installations in terms of form and material to provide maximum recognizability. However, they all share the aforementioned properties: readable figures, porous, and as exhibition per se. Throughout the construction, the three pavilions have colloquially been referred to as: "Membrane Sea Snail ," " 3D-print Plastic Wave Breaker Splash," and "Recycled Brick Coral Reef."
