Rio Kobayashi has collaborated with engineering firm Webb Yates on the designer's first-ever pavilion, an abstraction of his childhood home in Japan, as part of the London Design Festival.
As the name suggests, the Off The Shelf pavilion is made using off-the-shelf materials ? standard-sized Douglas fir planks, sheets of polycarbonate and PVC ? that were left unaltered so they can be returned to the manufacturers and reused after the installation comes to a close.
"So many pavilions end up in the bin," Webb Yates co-founder Steve Webb told Dezeen. "So we really wanted to use things that were Off The Shelf, clip them together and then take them apart again."
Off The Shelf is the brainchild of Rio Kobayashi and Webb Yates
Instead of screws or joints, the engineers used an elaborate post-tensioning system to clamp the different components in place so they can be easily disassembled. "We're using techniques that you would use for bridges," Webb explained.
"Post-tensioning is not something you use for furniture or even for normal buildings."
The structure is made from standard lengths of timber
Off The Shelf is the first public art commission from Olympia ? a 19th-century events centre in West Kensington that Thomas Heatherwick and SPPARC are currently refurbishing and redeveloping into a 14-acre mixed-use complex set to open next autumn.
The pavilion was designed to reference the development both in its focus on reuse and its use of Por...