THE CARAPACE PAVILION by the CLIPPER Lab and Studio: A project designed and built by students and faculty of the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75uRsuIghLM
Sponsored by a grant from the PCI Foundation and PCI West. It is supported and hosted by Clark Pacific at their precast plant in Fontana California.
It has an anticlastic geometry, and a tubular diagrid ultra-thin-shell structure. Students created a custom software design tool, and fabricated the mold on our Digital Fabrication" lab in the School of Architecture. The design and construction process was almost paperless, and we built five UHPC panels using just one clever mold. It has no rebar and was fully fabricated offsite.
A raised-bed and integral foundation will allow a "one-truck, one-trip, one-day" installation without disturbing potential native cultures artifacts.
STUDIO NATION: News from the USC "CLIPPER" STUDIO
The students and faculty of the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California thank Brad Williams (pictured) and the entire Clark Pacific team for years of dedication to our PCI Foundation studio. We are getting very close to ready to transport the Carapace Pavilion to the site where we hope it will remain in use for a century or more with no maintenance required. Our site is near the former "Black Butte" mine (sometimes called the "Gold Tiger" mine) and the Carapace Pavilion site has been very carefully positioned to frame a distant mountain view to the north and a close-up view of the rocks to the south.