Project Description
FROM THE ARCHITECTS:
Designed and constructed by a team of 20 students from the Wood Program Aalto University, the pavilion provides a sheltered stage for Annantalo, an art center for young people and families in the center of Helsinki. The project was built to accommodate various art events from the school during the summers for the next five years.
The stage is based on a square shaped plan to provide a flexible and democratic space suitable for many types of presentations. The flexibility of the space intends to be a tool for the teachers and students of the school in their creative activities by providing a main stage for artists and an audience of 60 people.
A variation of triangular wall shapes open the stage and serve as the structural elements of the project. The geometry of the roof follows the same principles, raising up to emphasize the location of the stage by means of a set of beams forming a parabolic structure.
The walls and deck structures were prefabricated from solid spruce wood in the program’s workshop in Otaniemi and then assembled on site. The glulam beams were factory made and assembled on site in one day. Plywood sheets for the roof covering were CNC cut to adjust to the geometry and assembled on site the same day.
Each step of the project has been documented lovingly online through the official website (a-lava.com) as students tracked the many steps of building a quality design at full scale.