Artefakt in Kyje
Structural Thin-bole Construction - the roots of Anarchostrukturalism
The history behind the emergence of this modest structure is highly unusual. We received a commission for a tower from the Prague 14 district government in an extensive future park. For it, we prepared three designs: one was a completely unusual construction from young logs, with which we had no previous experience, yet on the land in Horní Maxov, where our second atelier is located, there were several kilometres of them, and so we were naturally attracted to the idea of trying something with them out of pure interest in the penetration of nature into construction systems. To our great joy, but also our great surprise, precisely this tower was selected by Prague 14 for realisation. We said that first of all we needed to test this kind of structure, and so we created this artefact. The word “artefact” was used by us to keep it apart from the idea of a building. It is not a building, just a pure attempt, in which it was all about trying what this construction could do. Some might say that it looks a bit like a woman’s behind. A distant similarity could be seen. Yet the actual sense of the matter was to try out in all senses what a structure from young ash and maple logs could look like, how it could be put together, what structural qualities it has. It’s a preparation for the construction of the tower.
In this structure, it’s possible to see our efforts in continuing within natural systems – with all their imprecision, chance, unplanned things. But carefully – there is something else that could now bear the highly popular phrase “from cradle to cradle”. We use a material that usually is either left to rot or at most is sawed up into firewood and burned in a stove. We’ve postponed this burning in a stove by some 15 - 20 years. It is architecture that leaves no traces behind itself, and uses a material that otherwise would not be used, in fact would be waste. At the same time, there is something quite close to the construction of the Third World. It is a path that leads us away from the plan, to what is soft, random, unplannable. And so it is important that we have involved a talented architect – sculptor David Kubík, under whose firm hand the students constructed and formed these beautiful curves in the workshop.
