Winner of APPLIED: Research Through Fabrication Competition

In mid-June, we published the first round finalists of the TEX-FAB APPLIED: Research through Fabrication competition, and today it was announced that the overall winner was the entry CAST THICKET by Christine Yogiaman and Ken Tracy. The jury, consisting of Nader Tehrani, Andrew Kudless, Branko Kolarevic, and Vlad Tenu, selected the winning project from the four finalists. CAST THICKET will now be built for the next TEX-FAB Event in Dallas next Spring, 2013.

The final jury convened at the ACADIA 2012, Synthetic Digital Ecologies conference in San Francisco to deliberate over the 4 finalists whose work was exhibited in the expansive nave of the California College of the Arts building. The jury, made up of preeminent members in the field comments on the potential of the 4 designs suggesting that all the design proposals represented thoughtful and meritorious research.

The work by Christine Yogiaman and Ken Tracy, Cast Thicket, received all around agreement from the jury that it, in the words of Branko Kolarevic, developed ‘geometry that is compelling’. Vlad Tenu, winner of the previous competition with Minimal Complexity (previously on Bustler) whose work was exhibited at the University of Houston College of Architecture added, ’I think the principal is really good’. Andrew Kudless’ suggestion that at this stage the work was a ‘protoprototype’ or in Nader Tehrani’s words is in a state of ‘pre-mock-up mock-up’, the jury concluded it needed additional work and would ’benefit from another series of iterations’, per Branko Kolarevic. Strong opinions resounded in favor of the proposal with Nader Tehrani stating ’that Cast Thicket is the only one I would be interested in seeing in that context’, given the overall goals of the competition brief, he continued, ‘I believe that the Cast Thicket can be calibrated to succeed and incredibly well.’

Over the next 4 months, Christine Yogiaman and Ken Tracy will further their proposal in collaboration with TEX-FAB to be installed in February at the University of Texas at Arlington, School of Architecture.

All images courtesy of TEX-FAB.