The last week before going in Evian, which is the fifth week for the House phase, we all worked on doing the prefabrication. We started by going couple times at the cutting site, we used the measures of our drawings and of our Rhino files.

We then made some templates to assemble our frames with a right angle and with the correct distance. 

We then all screwed our frames. All our frames are built in a way that every horizontals sits on the horizontals of the proto, and that it won't be too heavy to lift it up.

(Having some fun making the template with Leo)

 (Screwing our double width joist)

(placing our frames in the template with Charles and Philippe)

From Rooms to Houses

Complex transition- how can we establish a dialogue between the two phases -rooms and then houses- as well as adpating the project obtained in rooms to the concrete site of houses? 

Above all, what changes were to be made knowing that the protostructure, which holds our ROOMS, was vanishing in the phase HOUSES? 

Technical Challenge

Starting straight with the maquette was too complicated; we had to much technical questions to be answered. In addition, one of the project's criteria was to be built as prefabricated, so that it could sit on the site without too much struggles. Our challenge was therefore to find a system, throughout the development of the drawing, to facilitate the anchorage of the project directly onto the site. 

         

                        Plan site/projet et élévation éclatée, avec détail d'ancrage. Échelle 1:10

                                         Axonométrie éclatée et système d'assemblage, échelle 1:10

   Détail pincement sur le béton 

 Vue en plan                                                                                                                                       Vue face Nord

                                                                                   La jetée 

It's not just about the name

"Butterfly", "moment", "passerelle"... finding a name to the project wasn't that easy. As a team, we were all concerned that the name was not a finality, but more a way to express the project as an experience. 

Der Wanderer appeared as a strong alternative to the previous ones. The name is a direct reference to Caspar David Friedrich's painting from the romantic era, which depicts a traveller contemplating a sea of clouds.

The link to the painting did not appear randomly; as the maquette was growing in our hands and the drawings took shape under our pencils, the question of the site and how the project could interact with it clearly concerned us. Therefore, we all tried to imagine the project in it's real context, the one we could not catch in EPFL's atelier. To evolve in that way, we decided to re-understand the project through writing:

Dans la continuité du quai, au loin, je regarde cet horizon qui s’étend à perte de vue, les

vagues frappent mes pensées.

Un pas, puis deux, le sol résonne sous ma semelle qui s’élance sur le bitume. Plus que

quelques mètres, mais plus j’avance plus il s’éloigne... un mur, un obstacle, mon pas est

stoppé instantanément.

Je me confronte au béton froid, les vagues se brisent en quelques notes qui résonnent.

Comment briser cette barrière, comment créer une passerelle entre ce monde physique et

l’étendue qui m’appelle …

                                                         Le Voyageur contemplant une mer de nuages

                            (Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer), David Friedrich 

Der Wanderer

Douce étendue qui frissonne de tes vagues brisées

La dure froideur du béton

Se mêlera à la tendresse du bois

Et nous franchirons le seuil

The name "der Wanderer" came quite naturally after this interesting reflection on the essence of the site. It was not a question of building a passerelle; it appeared more as an experience, starting onto the ground, evolving at the extremity of the dock and finishing above the lake, surrounded by its vastness. 

                                                                                      Immersion

                                                                                                        Angles

                                                                                                 Underwater

                                                                                              Déploiement 

Before the Etat des lieux, during the third week, all the studio focused on finishing the 1:10 model of the project. For that, every groups focused on their walls, and then we dispatched the tasks so that some of us could work on the floor, some of us on the stairs, and some of us on the drawings such as axonometric and elevation that are necessary to understand the process of construction.

(Photo of our space between the straight wall covered by wooden slat and the inclined wall covered by wooden panels, but on the side where the frames are visible)

(Photo of our corridor, between the two walls covered by wood panels)

(Rhino 3D model of our project and also the link with the Marechal's proto)