Of Note To kick off a public art program for downtown San Antonio’s Travis Park, a student team from UTSA designed and built F 2. A grid of spruce boards molded into a shell and covered in folded plastic panels, the project was on view for most of the summer but taken down prematurely due to vandalism.
PHOTOS COURTESY KEVIN MCCLELLAN.
F2 What began as a spring graduate seminar on “minimal surfaces, inflatables, branching, cellular structures, and centenaries” at The University of Texas at San Antonio College of Architecture, culminated in the installation of F2 in one of the Alamo City’s historic green spaces, Travis Park. The project — a grid of spruce boards molded into a shell and covered in folded plastic panels — spanned over 50 ft on the diagonal and reached 17 ft in height. A beautiful web, F 2 looked like a floating picnic blanket from above. Students mounted 760 computer numerical control (cnc)-cut Coroplast folded panels to more than 4,000 linear feet of wood, and they anchored the installation with water-jet-cut steel footings. The students fabricated all the specific parts during a two-week period and spent five days installing F2. The design process was developed over the course of the spring semester under the guidance
of Andrew Kudless, principal of Oakland-based Matsys and 2014 Dean’s Distinguished Visiting Critic at UTSA College of Architecture, and Kevin McClellan, co-director of TEX-FAB and lecturer at UTSA. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s San Francisco office provided research and structural design support with direction from David Shook. Datum Engineers provided the final design engineering. The student design team included Jesus Baray, Maria Cortez, Roxanna Del Valle, Juan Carlos Dominguez, Alvaro Jose Espino, Sara Davenport, Martha Peralta, Aleksandr Mikhailov, Andres Mulet, Troy O’Conner, Genevieve Ramirez, Barry Reyna, Antonio Sanchez, and Ana Villarreal. “Providing the students with the hands-on experience of building the full-scale prototype was really important as a teaching tool,” noted McClellan, who also emphasized that the College of Architecture is one of the few UTSA academic departments located down-
town. “F 2 gave the students an opportunity to affect their immediate environment and contribute to the neighborhood.”
The project — a grid of spruce boards molded into a shell and covered in folded plastic panels — spanned over 50 ft on the diagonal and reached 17 ft in height. That the project was built at all is due in large part to the City’s support for F 2. The Department for Creative and Cultural Development and the City Center Development Office both provided donations and logistical support as part of the effort to spearhead a rotating public art program in Travis Park. As the first installation planned for the park, F 2 was a welcome summer attraction.
9/10 2014
Texas Architect 15