Code Bothy Brick Shelter / Piercy&Company + Material Architecture Lab

Code Bothy Brick Shelter / Piercy&Company + Material Architecture Lab - Exterior PhotographyCode Bothy Brick Shelter / Piercy&Company + Material Architecture Lab - Interior Photography, Wood, BrickCode Bothy Brick Shelter / Piercy&Company + Material Architecture Lab - Interior PhotographyCode Bothy Brick Shelter / Piercy&Company + Material Architecture Lab - Interior Photography, Brick, FacadeCode Bothy Brick Shelter / Piercy&Company + Material Architecture Lab - More Images+ 8

  • Area Area of this architecture project Area:  9
  • Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2020
  • Photographs
    Photographs:Naaro
  • Manufacturers Brands with products used in this architecture project
    Manufacturers:  Petersen Tegl
  • Design Team: Guan Lee, Daniel Widrig, Adam Holloway
  • Structural Engineer: Tim Lucas
  • Main Contractor: David Hussey
  • Landscape: Andy Grant
  • Site Manager: Nigel Tucker
  • Chief Bricklayer: David Hussey
  • Bricklaying Team: Kevin Rouff, Paco Bockelmann, Jianbin Sun
  • Bricks: Petersen Tegl
  • City: Lacey Green
  • Country: United Kingdom
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Code Bothy Brick Shelter / Piercy&Company + Material Architecture Lab - Exterior Photography
© Naaro

Text description provided by the architects. Code-Bothy is an experimental digitally designed brick shelter, hand-built using an AR headset at Grymsdyke Farm in Buckinghamshire. The product of collaborative research by Material Architecture Lab (The Bartlett) and architects Piercy&Company, Code-Bothy merges digital technologies with traditional bricklaying, offering a future vision of opportunity rather than obsolescence for this age-old craft. The structure itself is based on a bothy - a basic shelter in remote areas left open for anyone to use. Whereas a traditional bothy has very simple geometries, the Code-Bothy team used parametric modelling to generate a highly complex structure.

Code Bothy Brick Shelter / Piercy&Company + Material Architecture Lab - Interior Photography, Wood, Brick
© Naaro

Wearing an AR (augmented reality) headset displaying information from the 3D model, the bricklayer, often working against intuition, was able to successfully construct the complex form. The project oscillated between the digital and manual throughout design and construction. Early concepts were hand sketched, capturing a sense of enclosure within the landscape and aligning the orientation of the openings for maximum sun penetration through the overhead oculus.

Code Bothy Brick Shelter / Piercy&Company + Material Architecture Lab - Interior Photography
© Naaro

The concept was then parametrically modelled. Each brick was set at a unique angle, without repetition. The rotation of the bricks was parametrically differentiated with code, to allow for the overall sculpting of the form. On the bottom layer, the bricks are set at 45 degrees to one another; that geometrical relationship gradually shifts so that the bricks are parallel to one another at the top.

Code Bothy Brick Shelter / Piercy&Company + Material Architecture Lab - Interior Photography, Brick, Facade
© Naaro

During construction, the bricklayers wore the AR headset and progressively ‘turned on’ each layer of bricks, placing real bricks where the Hololens display showed virtual ones. The space for mortar is accounted for in the model simply as a gap between the bricks, one of many aspects where the skills of the bricklayer are indispensable. This project acknowledges the social and economic implications of technological change, but proposes that this human-computer interface can offer both a new language for brick architecture but also a future for the bricklaying trade.

Code Bothy Brick Shelter / Piercy&Company + Material Architecture Lab - Exterior Photography
© Naaro

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Project location

Address:Lacey Green, Princes Risborough HP27 0RB, United Kingdom

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Location to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.
About this office
Cite: "Code Bothy Brick Shelter / Piercy&Company + Material Architecture Lab" 26 Mar 2021. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/959137/code-bothy-brick-shelter-piercy-and-company-plus-material-architecture-lab> ISSN 0719-8884

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