AF_WW_6.pdf

The project ‘one datum roof’ is a temporary shading structure, designed for the Adelaide Festival – Writers’ Week. It investigates the possibility of providing an effective shading system for passive climate control in a public outdoor setting, while also creating space and identity for the Adelaide Festival and local community.

Writers week is an open air festival. It is subject to spells of hot weather, during which direct sunlight not just impacts the audience’s comfort but even prevents them from attending in the first place. Existing standard shading devices, currently used, fail to effectively mitigate solar radiation. At the same time they the festival an appearance that is interchangeable with other public events in the Adelaide Parklands.

The aim of this project is to improve the locations bioclimatic behaviour, while at the same time providing signage to signify the Writers Week Festival beyond the immediate event. The challenge addressed is the question of how to provide essential infrastructure and artistic expression with the limited budget of an arts festival.

This is achieved through a novel combination of a standardized system used for agricultural shading purposes with Lidar scanning technology, allowing the shading device to be tailored around the natural vegetation. Advanced surveying technology combined with cost effective low-tech materiality, a symbiosis of natural and artificial shading, that establishes a new datum across the treetops draws. On that replaces harsh solar radiation with diffused dappled lighting, that creates a spatial presence that was missed before.