[ ply-studio ] Plywood Ornament

This time the students' investigation of the limit of plywood was positioned between the aesthetic and the structural, a redefination of the constituent material properties of plywood. The observation began from the premise that plywood possess strength only in 2 axial directions, of which its corresponding grains would not be completely revealed. As such, the project sought to develop increased structural strength in the 3rd axis.

The reconstitution process started with the reduction of the plywood sheet into its smallest particle - a 12mm x 12mm x 12mm cube, then reassembling 27 nos. of these cubes into a basic building block of 36mm cube, with its cross grains arranged tri-axially. Theoretically, assuming no wastage, 740 such cubes could be obtained from a single sheet, giving rise to 7400 cubes from 10 sheets - an immense amount.

During the fabrication process, it was astonishing to see a direct transformation in scale, size and proportion of the plywood - from 10 nos. of 4ft x 8ft planar sheets to potentially a single super dense block of 3ft cube in size. The density of plywood at such a scale would not have been possible without a transferrence of mass and volume from one form to another.

The final proposal explored how the cubes could be stacked and glued in place. The final form was derived from how each minute 36mm cube basic building block, through minimum surface of contact with another, achieve the largest overall physical size. The actual act of fabrication was itself an act of monumentality, the final structure became an ornamental gesture which embodied the labours involved.