Return AMS Pavilion

The classes of 2020 and 2021 at UBC spent years apart due to pandemic. 

As a reflection on this experience and a celebration of coming back together, the Alma Mater Society proposed the construction of an Outdoor Space and Pavilion as their class gift. The organization enlisted members of HiLo Lab and Campus and Campus and Community Planning (CCP) to help design and construct this project. The pavilion is an exploration of the idea of "Return". 

This includes a return to our community, ensuring that waste materials return to the built environment, and that our construct returns maximum value to the campus. The goal is to build using low-impact materials and novel fabrication and assembly strategies, including Zippered Wood and reconstituted cellulose products. The design focuses on site responsive form, material reuse, and low-impact carbon-neutral construction techniques. It will provide seating, cover, comfort, and basic infrastructure to accommodate outdoor student/faculty/staff gathering for years to come. The project is sited within a bosque of trees that sits between the university library and the primary student centres. In 2020, the bosque lost a red oak to disease. The pavilion will occupy the space left when that tree was removed.

One technology the pavilion employs is HiLo's zippered wood, a novel material deformation technology that transforms straight dimensional lumber members into predictably curved elements. The process includes the development of custom software scripts that allow architects to design, fabricate, and integrate curved lumber elements into their designs. The pavilion uses new and salvaged lumber to generate linear and planer structural components (columns and CLT). Zippering requires a digitally generated tooth pattern be cut into boards. When two modified boards are mated (or “zipped”), the prismatic teeth force incremental bends resulting in a predictably bent member. This is done without form-work, just pure geometry producing its own expression.