Monarch: A House in Six Parts

Monarchs: A House in Six Parts playfully explores the possibilities of 3-D printing concrete and digitally fabricating lightweight, structurally efficient wood in new architectural design and construction.

The installation, created by HANNAH, the experimental design and research studio of Cornell University professors Leslie Lok and Sasa Zivkovic, features six subtly colored pavilions ranging from 35 feet to 71 feet tall and spaced about 100 feet apart. Each is composed of an inhabitable 3-D–printed base topped with a series of robotically and digitally fabricated curved wood panels.

The pavilions cluster in a circular manner, defining a distinctive gathering space on the vast festival grounds and welcoming you through its arched pathways, into its nooks, and onto its ledges and furniture-scale pieces where you can meet others, sit, and escape.

The lightweight plywood panels bend to produce self-bracing structures with towering “wings” or “crowns” that expand in geometric shapes evoking butterflies or an abstracted tree species, such as the expressive California fan palms indigenous to the Coachella Valley. The lightness and geometry of the structure inspired the use of “monarchs” in the installation’s title.

The gradient colors differentiate the structures, serve as markers or wayfinders, and play into the desert’s atmosphere and light. They also highlight the patterning in the wood, generating visual effects that appear to change as you move across the exterior of the pavilions — a dynamic interplay between the natural material and hues from the environment of the landscape — and an entirely different experience awaits inside.

By day, the pavilions cast shadows and provide valuable shade. At night, vibrant light effects accentuate the overlapping patterns and verticality of the wood with a dramatic display of animated color.

The result of hundreds of iterations — testing, tinkering, designing, and redesigning — the installation was created to live beyond Coachella. Each 3-D–printed concrete base can be repurposed as a spatial and structural component for a house with an open floor plan and rooms in a single- or multi-level structure.

For this project, HANNAH engaged PERI 3D Construction for the printing process, while the light-weight wood towers were fabricated at Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, and assembled on site at Coachella.