Wave Pavilion / MacDowell.Tomova

A young design firm led by Parke MacDowell, Diana Tomova and Boriana Tomova. Situated on the campus of the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, the pavilion functions as a gathering space and doubles as a didactic tool within the dialogue of digital fabrication. Constructed from ½ inch steel rods, the pavilion intends to illustrate how the line can be “explicitly leveraged toward the nuanced description of space.”

Using the line as a starting point, the team has developed a particular script that experiments with turning this linear component into a new form of spatial geometry. Once constructed, what began as a line emerges as a surface and

“becomes atmosphere.”

According to the architects, “Gradients of pattern read across the breadth of the Pavilion, but moments of eccentricity—phase shifts, vestigial phenotypes, dormant features—highlight the composite relational processes of the underlying system. Here Line becomes a means of challenging the ubiquity of the Blob within scripted/parametric form-making; geometric composition supplying all the complexity and nuance for which we have become enamored of calculus-dependent design.”

The project capitalizes on digital fabrication’s positive influence within architecture, as it can lead to “the ultimate customization, the built realization of previously untenable forms, and unprecedented fluidity between design and construction,” according to the design team.