Eco Prefab 2
A precast concrete pavilion designed for disassembly removal and reassembly elsewhere
Our client, one of Australia's largest housing developers, required a temporary sales and education pavilion for their latest suburban housing offering. The Brief called for a building that was iconic and clearly stood out from its suburban context but at the same time was temporary structure and needed to be moveable in some way. Our client was thinking Murcutt but we were thinking Utzon!
Eco Prefab 2 was inspired by a series of family homes that a young Jørn Utzon designed in the 60's for his family on their property on Pittwater, one hour north of Sydney. These projects were never realised.
Each iteration of the Bayview House explored the notion of breaking the building into a series of pavilions linked by courtyards, each pavilion finding its ideal orientation and relationship to landscape and having a clear role in the narrative of a young growing family living, working and playing over time. Two of the four Bayview iterations were later realised in his two Mallorcan masterpieces; Can Lis initially (in paradise) then Can Feliz 20 years later (in heaven). The Bayview Houses were exploring an innovative U-shaped beam system that utilised Ralph Symonds hot-bonded plywood technology whereby thin sheets of aluminium, copper or bronze were hot-bonded to plywood. Any shape up to 15 metres length could be achieved and the elements were stronger and lighter than steel.
We developed a precast concrete construction system where wall, roof and floor elements are generated from a family of three moulds so the logic of a repeating structural system opens up mass production, synthesising construction, structure and architecture. Architecture is structure. Construction is form!
Wherever possible, the precast components and their system of erection is expressed and explored sculpturally and materially. Elements like the roof gutters that tip water into the concrete awning then down a rain chain and into tanks for reuse act as small metaphors of the sites hydrology and help underscore the relationship of the building to the land.
The floor, wall and roof elements that float over the site on a field of steel screw piles were erected in two days with a further four weeks required to fit out the interior.
This scheme was a development of our earlier Eco Prefab 1 in Sydney
