TUBOO
Product
CLIENT
Research
YEAR
2023
WHERE
Ferrara, Venezia
COLLAB
Politecnico di Milano, IUAV Venezia, Rwth Aachen University
Tuboo is a project designed by Plam Studio for the 2023 Architecture Biennale, for the temporary installation Climate Wunderkammer, a collective archive of practical and open source solutions to climate change.
The two types of seats made of PVC pipes, were designed drawing on the traditional Japanese technique of bamboo folding. Tuboo is proposed as a case study to be included within the archive: a design approach that paves the way for reflection, addressing issues of “de-contextualizing” and “re-interpreting.”
How can techniques from the past meet current technologies and trigger processes of re-thinking?
The seats are made from a series of orange PVC building-use rain pipes, shaped and bent with the aid of heat. Tuboo minimizes the types of materials used to meet the function that the object is to serve.
Because of the lightness and strength of the material, the seats are easy to assemble, dis-assemble and transport. They can be easily reassembled within the set-up space and also used in the outdoor environment.
Tuboo is designed to be constructed from manufacturing company production waste or construction site remnants without the need to put newly manufactured PVC into the environment but by reusing existing material.
The attachment system between modules uses a standard, easily available steel tensioner. The opensource project is potentially repeatable by anyone and manages to breathe new life into the material by re-imagining its field of use.
Exhibition Setup
Employed in a temporary installation inside a historic Venetian palace and embedded in an open source framework, Tuboo was born from the need to be self-producible, modular, durable (given the six-month duration of the installation), lightweight, and realizable with readily available and inexpensive materials. A product was required that could meet the goals of provocation and originality, which, not only could be signed Plam in its aesthetics, but could also open reflections to new design approaches.
From a single PVC rain pipe 5 meters long and 16 cm in diameter, the first version of Tuboo, “Elefantina,” was created.
Later, to create visual rhythm in the installation, its “Cavallina” version was made: a single pipe 2.5 meters long and 20 cm in diameter, supported by two legs with a diameter of 10 cm.
Tuboo, was pre-fabricated at PoliPolo, shipped and assembled on site.
