This architectural contribution was made by a group of students from my class, myself included, during the wood course in the beginning of September. We chose the spot because of the circle of stones there, which we thought would make a great place for meeting other people and spending time together, with some adjustments of the surroundings.
We were not allowed to use nails or screws, and based the design on a system where oak triangles were made by plugging together shafts of oak together, using oak plugs made ourselves, and then tying them together with a rope. The structure is suspended from the surrounding oak trees, and doesn't touch the ground at any point. The use of rope allowed a degree of flexibility which is important when using living oak trees as piers.
An important part of the design was working with sound. The structure is oriented towards a waterfall, and some of the triangles were filled in with wood to reflect and enhance the sound, while as the same time providing some protection from rain. There's also a road a hundred meters below, and we wanted to shut out as much of the sounds of cars as much as possible.
Another important part of the design was to capture the beautiful way oak trees filter the sunlight. We wanted to enhance that effect in a way that was clearly visually different from the branches, and chose to use aspen pickets. Aspen wood handles expose to the Norwegian weather extremely well, and turn silvery grey quite fast.
I like the dimensions of the projects. The scale is very human, and although we could have filled in more of the triangles in my opinion, the structure creates a nice space which achieves most of the intentions we had when planning and building it.
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