Playwood. The great Kemeri bog visitor centre. Stretching the boundaries of an emergency construction technology through the design of a dynamic framework inspired by the Latvian forest

Despite population trends toward urbanization, the forest continues to have a strong appeal to the human imagination, thus recognizing it as essential rather than just incidental to human well-being. Exactly this untouched, wild and mysterious scenario characterised by the swarming of different living species, constitute the inspiration and the background of our design proposal. The Latvian Great Kemeri National Park landscape gave us the opportunity to take advantage of its slender and lush trees, juxtaposed to the barren and marshy land, to set up the start of our thesis project, asking us to design its entry point through an international competition. A visitor centre for definition is a transient space where people can stop for few hours or just pass through. In this sense the Japanese experience acquired during a long stay in the land of the rising sun, has been a fundamental contribution in the development of the volume, and in the organization of its permeable spaces. Indeed, in Japanese architecture inside and outside interpenetrates and the space is continuous. A food for thought can also be found in the Japanese writing system. Putting together the Kanji (pictogram) for “house”, and the one for “garden,” you get “home.” With this projects, we wanted to take the forest as a model for an architecture of permeable floors, protective canopies and resilient ecologies. As Reima Pietilä used to advice his students, it’s important to ”design places, not buildings.” This is intended as an exhortation to shift the accent from an image-centred division of building surfaces to a spatial and perceptual experience of the environment. The building is designed as a wooden framework that embrace all the activities. The visitor centre is a dynamic and sustainable building that lives with the seasons and offers endless amount of breathtaking views. Moreover, it is lightly raised from the ground to minimise the impact on the soil, wildlife and ecology. Also the materials not only present a colours palette in harmony with the surroundings, but their selection keep a special eye also on the environmental and ecological aspects. In fact most of them are or recyclable or recycled and were chosen accordingly to the local environment and costumes. The visitor moves back and forth across spaces, between the constant evolving of the forest and its integration within the architecture work, that guide him, visually and physically, towards the great Kemeri board walk and its history and culture, through a playful use of veneer elements. This is how the pun play-wood, that gave the name of the great Kemeri Bog Visitor centre was born. Partition walls inside the building divide the programme and become information medium serving the exhibitions. The structural part, once again, comes from the knowledge transmitted from the passionate attitude of professor and architect Hiroto Kobayshi, during the researching activities at Keio University in Tokyo. A prefabricated, cheap, lightweight, fast and dry, easy to build construction technology developed by the inspiring professor previously mentioned has been adopted. The so called Veneer House System itself is made of plywood panels cut by simple CNC router. The main aim for the thesis development has been to use this particular construction technology by enhancing its strength, trying at the same time to stretch its limits in terms of comfort, sustainability and composition. This has been possible also thanks to the knowledge acquired through the studying path about sustainable building technology, architectural and structural design.