Our building design
Under the tree bar! An event bar design.
Project Description
Under the Tree Bar is designed to respond to the World Architecture Festival design competition concepts of 'Value and Values' and 'Keeping it Real'. The concept evokes the fun free feeling of sitting under a tree with your favourite drink on a hot summers day. To keep it real, the design uses simple techniques and low-cost construction through re-used and found materials and low tech innovation to achieve this.
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Design Strategy
The design explores how plants can be used as a 'cladding' material, exploiting the delicate but robust nature of climbers to sculpt the structure of the bar skillfully .
The bar design mimics the structure of a tree and creates a trunk in the core which holds the services and distributes them through branches within the light weight timber frame.
Used glass bottles and decanters are designed as lamps and hung from a simple timber frame. Light emits through the cluster of translucent bottle lamps to create a glow or a beacon for a meeting point at the WAF.
Fresh mint, strawberry and lemon plants are hung in used champagne buckets for the use in the bar for the drinks.
The design encourages the staff and the public to recycle by accommodating used bottle banks in the bar. An elegant permeable but robust mesh, created through interwoven Jute plant stems, are used to hold the recycled bottles which is integrated within the service zone of the bar.
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A simple trellis of piano wire is interwoven through the timber frame to support the canopy made from Virginia creepers. The canopy acts as a hub for meeting, standing and chatting at the festival.