Common-action gardens: performative and parametric prototypes

Abstract

Common-action Gardens are wooden park structures that were featured within a series of open-air exhibitions, the 3rd International Architecture Biennial Antalya in 2015, and the Beşiktaş International Garden—Flower Festival İstanbul in 2016. These selected art works had been built in the city parks to be exhibited during the festivals. They are still being used by the communities as urban gardens to grow, harvest and share edible plants, rest and play, and sustain flora-fauna. The POTplus Design Research Group has constructed these structures as architectural prototypes in their research to integrate digital design and fabrication technologies with sustainable landscape issues. The specific realms within the scope of this research process are parametric design, performance-based design, digital fabrication, permaculture studies and material exploration. Common-action Gardens I and Common-action Gardens II are constructed with the same composite material system, comprising recyclable materials of beech marine plywood and ethylene-vinyl acetate. They are designed to combine elements of permaculture and integrate these elements with the needs of the park users within a complex structure. In the form-finding process, contouring techniques facilitate the integration of various elements of permaculture within one continuous structure and fast assembly, while nesting operations and CNC milling enable minimum waste of materials. These two urban gardens are designed, fabricated and assembled with the same design-built system based on contouring but in order to adapt to different contexts and to enhance their performative issues they have differentiations. This chapter covers the parametric design approach, digital fabrication and assembly processes of these urban gardens to compare, and discuss the performance-based design strategy behind these processes.