FriBriX @ Structural Paper Workshop

On Friday, May 27, 2022, 2 p.m., MoA members Maxie Schneider, Jojo Shone and Lorenzo Guiducci offered a workshop on Structural Paper as part of this year's Bauwendefestival in Berlin.

The »Structural Paper« workshop playfully explored the potential of paper as a building material for constructing interwoven structures. By simply interleaving sheets of paper, we could construct connections that hold only through friction. We understood paper as a contemporary, urban resource and use waste paper to design a bottom up building process. All participants were invited to bring their own waste paper and join us in crafting stacks of paper and connecting them into a larger hanging structure/pergola.

Welcome to the next chapter of the FriBriX project...

The original idea stems from the creative minds of Serafina Baucken, Eva Eckert and Jojo Shone, participants in the Scaling Nature 2, MoA Design Studio 2019/20, Department of Textile and Surface Design at Weißensee School of Art and Design Berlin. Inspired by the structure of striated muscles cells, in which tiny forces are multiplied by the parallel arrangement and interleaving of active motor proteins, the three students upscaled the interleaved arrangement to connect together stacks of paper sheets: much to everyone’s surprise the connections were so strong that structures made of tens of paper stacks could easily be hanged as indoor room separators (Figs: Jojo Hands connecting two stacks and one of the hanging structures from SN2). The strength of the interleaved connections derives from the geometric amplification of friction between the paper sheets, a principle that is also popularly known as the »phonebook enigma«.

The students’ prototypes were so promising that soon after a research project was forked - namely FriBriX (acronym for Friction-based Bricks). In FriBriX, Cluster members Lorenzo Guiducci, Christiane Sauer, Maxie Schneider and Jojo Shone are exploring new bottom-up building processes to create structures at architectural scale built from interleaved paper sheets. This is not a trivial task, as paper itself is not a construction material: although extremely rigid in tension, paper sheets are easy to tear; in sheet form, paper does not resist compression; finally, paper is very sensitive to environmental conditions such as humidity. On the other hand, a monomaterial building module like FriBriX, which even doesn't make use of adhesives, is easy to recycle or dispose of, a very uncommon quality in the panorama of construction materials.

During the research so far structural principles were succesfully adapted from weaving patterns to create a 5 meters-long hanging bridge. The bridge could easily carry its own weight, didn’t show sign of collapse after a 2 months installation period and was tested by three sitting persons and one walking person. Concurrrently, both single connections between two stacks and larger woven samples have been mechanically characterised at Fachhochschule Potsdam and have demonstrated extreme strength (two 100-sheets stacks resist up to 2 tons in tension).

On May 27, the FriBriX team was invited to the Bauwende Festival to demonstrate the alternative and low-impact construction technique in the »Structural paper« workshop: here participants have embarked in a collective building event, crafting stacks of paper and connecting them into a larger hanging structure/pergola. For the project team this was a great opportunity to push the limits of their concept and test it in an outdoor settings. In more detail, compared to the woven bridge we introduced three new challenges: a coarser woven pattern (Kagome weave); simpler means of stack creation (paper tape instead of nut-and-bolt; printed paper instead of virgin white copypaper); the unpredictability of an outdoor environment (and variable atmospheric conditions).

After two days of intensive collective work the resulting structure (a 2.5 meters wide pergola) was erected, and it since then withstands the elements of the Berliner late-spring. Currently its performance and planning ex-situ tests after an operation time of 2 months are monitored, to understand the effect of weathering on paper. On the 1st of July the pergola has been moved to the inner yard at weissensee kunsthochschule berlin, to be exhibited during this year’s school Rundgang, and you are cordially invited to enjoy its shade there.

All information about the hybrid Bauwende Festival from May 26-29 in Berlin is available on the festival website.