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sweeping arches and wood-laminate decks form i/thee’s stage at site of woodstock festival

texas students + i/thee install peek-a-boo pavilion

 

Among the historic grounds of the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair in New York, Peak-A-Boo takes shape as a continuous series of wood-laminate arches and decks, forming a pavilion and flexible performance space. Led by design collective i/thee and curated by Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, the project intends to reengage the historic site with design-build pedagogies, fabricated and installed by a group of students at Texas Tech University. The installation stands as the first piece of programmable infrastructure in the Bindy Bazaar woods since the 1969 festival and marks the beginning of the second phase of a three-year pilot program to develop a signature art and architecture festival at the site. The result is a lightweight yet robust soaring structure, delicately cascading through the tree canopy with pixelated openings, and geometric layered panels.

sweeping arches + decks of wood-laminate form i/thee’s stage at site of woodstock festival
all images courtesy of i/thee

 

 

a wooden stage on the grounds of woodstock festival

 

Led by Neal Lucas Hitch and design collaborative i/thee, the project was fabricated and installed by the university students over two weeks as part of their summer course, Architecture IRL. Peek-A-Boo is a pixelated wood-laminate performance stage at the historic site of the 1969 Woodstock Festival, with a soaring structure, lightweight yet robust, delicately cascading through the tree canopy. Conceptually, the project aims to bridge fraught binaries between analog and digital production modes; the structure was designed using computational digital tools and analyses but was constructed primarily by hand tools in-situ.

 

With a sense of permanence, the Peek-A-Boo is embedded within the landscape, shrouded and punctured by forest flora. The design of the structure is intended to shape diverse and comfortable experiences: its arches create the bandshells for performers to play under; its decks become the tiered seating for audience members; and the pixelated surface provides an undulating canvas for dancing shadows seeping through the forest clerestory. i/thee’s design consists of over sixty quarter-inch plywood sheets, elastically deformed and laminated together to form a pixelated bending-active structure, supplemented by six laminated timber arches digitally constructed to mimic the natural bending of the wood sheathing. Construction started with the hand-cutting of over 180 unique pieces, which were glue-laminated together to form the ribbed substructure. Plywood sheets were next secured along the laminated arched members with screws and tied together with rivets.

sweeping arches + decks of wood-laminate form i/thee’s stage at site of woodstock festival
trees delicately poke through pixilated openings on Peek-A-Boo

 

 

a sweeping, lightweight yet robust structure

 

The design process began off-site at Texas Tech University led by i/thee, where students modeled various ‘quilted’ wood-laminate design solutions by hand with scaled materials. These models were then translated into computational scripts that allowed for rapid prototyping and analysis. The structure was entirely fabricated by students on-site at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in the historic Bindy Bazaar—a craft bazaar and marketplace used as the main entry sequence for the 1969 Woodstock festival that has been in the process of restoration since 2017.

sweeping arches + decks of wood-laminate form i/thee’s stage at site of woodstock festival
candid view of small archway

sweeping arches + decks of wood-laminate form i/thee’s stage at site of woodstock festival
the stage is perched along the historic grounds of the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair in New York

arches-decks-wood-laminate-i-thee-stage-woodstock-festival-1

the installation was designed and fabricated by university students, led by i/thee

sweeping arches + decks of wood-laminate form i/thee’s stage at site of woodstock festival
a series of overlapping panels and small and large archways and decks form Peek-A-Boo

sweeping arches and wood-laminate decks form i/thee’s stage at site of woodstock festival
a large archway provides an intimate shelter

sweeping arches and wood-laminate decks form i/thee’s stage at site of woodstock festival
the interactive archways and decks can be freely explored by visitors

arches-decks-wood-laminate-i-thee-stage-woodstock-festival-4

i/thee’s initiative, led by Neal Lucas Hitch, was installed by students in two weeks

sweeping arches + decks of wood-laminate form i/thee’s stage at site of woodstock festival
trees poke through and sunlight seeps through the pixelated openings

sweeping arches + decks of wood-laminate form i/thee’s stage at site of woodstock festival
a large sweeping archway

sweeping arches and wood-laminate decks form i/thee’s stage at site of woodstock festival
computationally generated rapid design iterations

 

 

 

project info:

 

name: Peak-A-Boo
designer: i/thee

team: Neal Lucas Hitch, Martin Hitch, Toryn Allen, Kevin Carreon, Alexander Garza, Alexis Hunsucker, Peizhao Li, Edwin Montoya-Cruz, Jacqueline Nguyen, Somayeh Ramezani, Lily Sanders, Caleb Scott, Anabelle Rice, Georgia Thomas

 

 

 

designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions’ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

 

edited by: ravail khan | designboom

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