Hang on, website is going through some cha cha cha cha cha changes.

We are currently undergoing some big changes including an attempt to update the clunky website we have been using for a while. Reasons are varied, mostly because we are undergoing a rebranding effort as TOIstudio has entered the professional Architecture foray.

So buckle up. We will be trying a whole new mess of options with the new site so things will be popping up and being taken down and I am sure a ton of links will be broken so please hang tight.

We are working towards cleaner, simpler and more engaging. Lots of buzzwords there that will require some iterations to get right.

Designers are their own worst clients, I am sure.

TOIstudio gearing up for fabrication of COLDstudio Snowball Pavilion for 2013 Winter deployment

Lots of things have been happening at the ol' TOIstudio homestead translating to the recent all quiet on the social media front.

The Kent State Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative has hired TOIstudio as design/fabrication consultant for the installation of the COLDstudio Competition Display Pavilion (We have been calling it COLDscapes). What began as graduate studio project has evolved into an actual physical and deployable structure.

The intent of the COLD Competition was to explore ideas to improve "livability" in cold weather cities. Ideas from protective structures to events and techniques to activate public space were explored resulting in over 80 international entries, and 3 selected winners.  The COLDstudio graduate program (of which I was an invited juror) explored creating temporary display pavilions that would illustrate cold weather living. The idea is to promote active urbanism even in inclement weather.

The selected pavilion design to display the selected competition entries is based on the design by KSU CUDC graduate student's Pasquale Esposito and Timothy Larke's "Snowball Pavilion" for the COLDstudio semester project.

COLD Studio | SNOWBALL PAVILION from KSU CUDC on Vimeo.

The CUDC team, headed by David Jurca with graduate students Pasquale Esposito and Derek Behm, in collaboration with TOIstudio are currently finessing the design to be installed for 29 days starting November 15th, 2013 in Star Plaza (1302 Euclid Ave. Cleveland, OH). The updated design remains honest to the original intent and thoughts of the team's initial proposal with some minor tweaking to increase success of functionality, constructability and deployment.

The new pavilion is being modeled in Rhino by the students and will be fabricated from CNC milled plywood mechanically fastened together for create the pavilion shell and is being studied via drawing and 3d modeling (because it is a design project). We hope to be pre-assembling the structure in the new (and undergoing renovation) Shop that TOIstudio will be moving fabrication into (more on that whole project/process later).

Assembled test model - lets us sort out which connections we still need to figure out

TOIstudio's role so far has been limited to lightly finessing the design in response to the site/use (the student team is doing all the heavy lifting) and sorting out construction issues/details in preparation for creating mill cutsheets and assembly/fabrication. We hope to preassemble the structure into "components" (you can call them "chunks") which will be delivered to the site for final assembly, almost like a large puzzle with van sized portions already figured out with the end goal of deploying the entire pavilion on site in one day. Currently we have the pavilion designed to be assembled into 12 components (which should easily fit in a van or on a trailer) and optimism remains high.  Best case scenario is that it will snow the day after the pavilion goes up.

More news on this project as it continues. So far it has been a blast and I am really excited with the process and cannot wait to start putting the full sized structure together.