architecture students at bezalel academy created a reusable bamboo pavilion

in jerusalem, at the entrance to the bezalel academy of arts and design courtyard, a shadow-casting bamboo pavilion challenges visitors’ perceptions of ‘inside’ and ‘outside.’ the pavilion is a result of a summer design-build studio course.

the structure was hand-built by bezalel architecture students
all images courtesy of yifat zailer and barak pelman   

material experimentation, full-scale prototyping: the designers and architects at bezalel benefit from traditional hands-on approaches. their engagement with fully realized structures puts their spatial ideas to the test. on paper, bamboo poles are weightless, abstract units. but materials do have weight and they do have texture and they don’t just effect the outcome of a design, but the process of building as well.

students experimented with bamboo and 3D printed joints

bamboo poles are uniquely sized and shaped; instead of forcing them into standardized shapes and treating them as such, 3d printed shuriken-shaped ‘ninja joints’ were designed to fit specific poles in specific places, each ninja joint printed with the exact dimensions of its corresponding pole in mind. the poles were then clumped together to create columns and the columns comprised much of the overall structure. the simple joint connectors mean that nearly 100% of the pavilion materials can be reused with ease. at the architecture department courtyard of bezalel, bamboo poles crescendo; they stand tall at different heights; centimeter differences are noticed by the touch, up close; the pavilion’s pieces cast shadows together, and visitors wonder if they are inside or out.

3D printed ‘ninja joints’ hold the bamboo columns together

the structure challenges the perception of indoor and outdoor structures.

nearly 100% of the structure is reusable

the structure plays with positive and negative space

students experimented with bamboo and 3D printed joints

project info:

project title: the bamboo pavilion
institute: bezalel academy of arts and design jerusalem
contact e-mail: [email protected]
tutors: barak pelman, lior skoury, shachar abelson, michalis georgiou
students: tom gershmen, inbar banjo, mor shafir, alexey sinchin, ivan kutkich, shay litbak, noam kidar, meitar keshet, omry alon, elad giat, mirit tzuk, inna berenfeld, raz mor-yosef, dubi avital, yotam malka, sally lifshitz, ortal shechter
project location: jerusalem
completion year: 2017
gross built area: 40 m2

other participants
(eg. collaborators, clients, consultants, etc): the bamboo center israel, the israeli green building council, israeli ministry of environmental protection, the architecture department at the university of nicosia