ZephyrPavilion, a windswept canopy, offers a shaded passagethrough the courtyard of the Honors Residence Hall at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.The pavilion serves as a social anchor at the convergence of countless flows.
Project Name: Zephyr
Architect Name: MARC FORNES THEVERYMANY
Dueling cantilevers extend from a knot-like center, offering both a signal and a sheltering experience along the campus path. This gentle giant is a highly curated scheme of computationally finessed protocols informing a graphically rich structural skin.
Four densely striped columns expand into bridging arcs, undulating wings and open looped columnsthat define oculi to the sky. Zephyr Pavillion embraces cross-campus traffic, pulling paths into and through its voluminous spaces. The rise and fall of the form is influenced by the various traffic paths through the space.
Arches curve out of the convergence of canted columns and the quietly sophisticated body opens new views onto the campus architecture, and to the sky above.
The hollow-bodied structure harnesses flowing trajectories in diagonalized stripes of intense curvature which shear out from an articulated base and provide a space to meet with fellow students, study while enjoying a coffee or to simply stroll through on the way to class.
THEVERYMANY
wind loads, and now responds to situational factors like point load and potential for vandalism. In Zephyr, the cross-directional patterning of structural stripes allows the formation of a span and height without any thickening, internal structure or temporary scaffolding.
A STRUCTURAL REPERTOIRE
Zephyr is a form partially reliant on physics-based principles and highly curated geometrical moves to drive its design. In design research across the last 30 projects, the studio’s principle of Structural Stripeshave reached a temporary apex in defining optimum thickness. Structure is no longer the main driver for this optimization.The extended series of built experiments in ultra-thin structural geometry has propelled a return to form as composition. The work is opening itself to new formal moves that would have not been structurally optimal if based on the quest for structure alone. Open looped columns, funneled bridges, a bisecting creased spine and streamlinedlocked edgesdefine the beginning of a repertoire of structural typologies that produce the intensive curvature on Zephyr Pavilion. At this level of compressed striping, the skin is able to carry more loads, making it possible for the first time to produce self- supporting cantilevers. Zephyr’s projecting wings are held aloft solely by the layering and subtle folds of its structural skin, as a cantilever-shell, that is neither the typical compressive shell structure loaded at its edges, nor the typical beam cantilever. The resulting space complicates the understanding of interior and exterior when the enclosure finally reveals itself as totally hollow from the projected ends.
