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"Design in 5: Sketch 120" hosted by the Architectural League of New York.
Sat. July 28th, 2007
The brief (simplified):
Scaffolding is omniprescent in New York City, it's ugly and seems to stay up forever. How can we begin to think about green scaffolding solutions or modular systems to improve this temporary structure which has become a permanent eyesore?
Our Answer:
What exisiting scaffolding does
a) protects people & passers-by from falling debris
b) provides access to construct new structures
c) provides acces to repair/reno/demo old structures
It already is temporary. It already is modular.
It goes hand in hand with our current building technology. If we built differently we might use different scaffolding.
Why? How has it come to be this way?
Noone wants to pay for scaffolding. It is a support structure secondary to the goal of the building itself.
As an overhead cost, many attempts have been made to increase it's efficiency as a system over a long period of time. Think of Darwin's theory of Evolution, apply it to scaffolding and you see how it has evolved into a lean system that works pretty well. Ugly yes.
But Brief = Conclusion. Scaffolding works well if we continue to use current building technology.
Our 2 cents: Proposal for New Ideas about Building Systems
If we look at the Djinguereber Mosque (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djinguereber_Mosque) built 1327 we have an integral scaffolding system. The facade is mud, each rainy season wears away the building. Posts are built within the mud to support access for construction and repairs, thus eliminating a seperate scaffolding system altogether.
Looking at buildings now this is merely an idea from a charette, but does show a few hints at answers for scaffolding needs on buildings after construction including repairs or even window cleaning which can happen as often as a few times a year!
Plus what do you want to do with all the exisiting scaffolding anyway... throw it out?
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