FACADE MOCKUP
FULL-SCALE FACADE MOCKUP OF CHINA ACADEMY OF ART’S FOLK ART MUSUEM BY KENGO KUMA
BUILDING TECHNOLOGY, THE COOPER UNION, FALL 2024
PROFESSOR: SAMUEL ANDERSON
IN COLLABORATION WITH: KATHERINE SAZHIN, HUGH ADAMS, SOFIIA STEPANENKO
This project involved the construction of a full-scale mockup of the facade of the Folk Art Muse-um at the China Academy of Art, designed by Kengo Kuma. The study emphasized the exploration of build-ing technology, materiality, and assembly techniques. The project started with the welding of a hot rolled steel frame to provide a stable foundation for the facade. Pre-cise drilling operations were undertaken to create holes on the steel plates for the attachment of hooks, which would later serve as connection points for the steel ca-bles. Then, cable network was installed with turnbuck-les on both ends, interconnecting the hooks to form the tension structure to hold the tiles. This stage required tensioning and alignment to accurately replicate the in-tended dynamic and orderly appearance of the facade. Meanwhile, the tiles were fabricated using Ultr-acal. Each tile underwent a drilling process to ac-commodate hooks, ensuring a floating effect when hanging on the cable system. The final phase involved the sys-tematic hanging of the tiles onto the cable network.