Thıs project is a personal exploration that
started by a real necessity of renovation of a friend’s house on the hills inTuscany near Cavriglia (Italy).
The existing building is going to be divided
in two part to have two different apartment. The idea is that one of the two
apartment will be used by a young couple, the other will be probabily be
given for lease.
Except for a little work of redistribution of
the existing spaces, the only new addıtıon is a new staircase that will serve
one of the two apartment, while the other is going to use the existing stair.
I was asked to devlope a proposal for the stair
but since the first moments was clear
that the stair would be builted on the base of a different project that uses prefabricated components, for this reason I had some free space for exploration.
The initial studies was based on a single
structure that englobe the pillar, the stairs and part of the floor of the
first level of the house.
A first analysis phase consisted on the
simulation of principal stresses distribution inside a limited volume area, under the
pressure of loads derived from the use
of the stair and the first level floor and definied a set of possible anchor
points in the existing structure.
On the base of the three dimensional vector
field describing the principal stresses distribution, the material proprieties
of the stair, was defined through the use of an agent base strategies to
mediate between agents behaviour and the vector field proprieties.
This process define a structure that is more
dense and massive where the principal stresses have high values and became more
fibrous and dematerialized where principal stresses registered are low.
The treatment of the exterior surface of the
structure was also studied to create variation between smooth and coarse surface that could give a
secure foothold to the user that are going up to the stair.
