Forest tour with Dr. Arbol

As part of the Raw nature course, we went for a walk in the surrounding Valdaura forest with Dr. Arbol, an expert for forest management and tree. He was able to answer every kind of question from an ecological point of view. The conversation between him and the course teacher Daria Bychkova (IAAC alumni and founder of Checkharda) was a unique opportunity for us to see different approaches. A massive conflict between design and preserve the forest.

Model time

After picking up some random branches we started using our creativity to design some construction. The purpose was to imagine a functional structure for the playground. With the help of Daria, we were able to learn how is the design approach by using natural tree shapes. It was cool to find out that it’s not so easy to use imagination while designing something through natural existent shapes. By the way, we were able to steal a lot, from Daria’s creativity and imagination skills.

Digital scanner

The next step was a lecture by an ex IAAC student about a scanner program that allowed us to take pictures of the trees we needed and to easily realize a 3d mesh for rhino, in order to have the proper shape and to create our playground with the perfect design. However, it has to be said that the program works better when the tree is easily accessible and not in the middle of the woodland, cause it will be important to take pictures all around it, to have wonderful results. In any case, we are great students and we were able to have awesome results as well.