The model was made by Jonathan BARNABY on behalf of the association R.Ev., to designs by Christopher STEAD (France) and Domenico LERRO (Italy), which proposed a modular system of construction (3, 4 or several structural bays) using the extremely dense hardwoods of Cambodia’s rain forests.
Such materials were hardly exportable, due to their provenance : booty from the sustained guerrilla warfare against the retreating Khmer rouge, more or less doomed to remain on Cambodian soil. One Saturday morning in February 1995 Khmer Army Generals, unexpectedly hastened to our lodgings in the infamous Tuol Sleng area, asked me what use could be found for the logged trunks of hardwood.
If they had furniture in mind, I suggested using the timber to debit standards sections of different lengths, which anyone would be able to handle in the construction of their abodes. I had grasped that, deprived of electric tools, local carpenters and joiners had huge difficulties just cutting indigenous hardwoods, which would break their saw blades.
Mounted on a cork base, the wooden pieces of the model were cut to dimension according to schedule of items established by CMAS, element by element. Prior to assemblage, I had JB photograph the volumes that the elements, piled together by article, represented. It was also a convenient means to check the schedule’s accuracy, in view of the project’s ultimate, industrial aim.
To suggest the roofing texture, of pressed interlocking tiles : bands of jute webbing. The whole could transported in an aluminium suitcase, that I had fitted out to take it**.
Survey sketch of a typical Phnom Penh dwelling, undertaken some months before the project.
**Later employed by Hugh DUTTON, JB proposed to him my exact same solution of fitted-out aluminium suitcase, to carry his structural model for an aéroport that he was designing, to meeting in Asia. Conclusion : the independent intelligence of the lo-tech artisan will always be preferable to that of tributary hi-tech dependance.
Related or parent pages :
Spatial models
Art, crafts and do-it-yourself
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