Rock Wall
The Rock Wall project extended the
fundamental principles developed in Rock Print
to promote granular jamming of architectural
structures, while exploring the speed of
deployment realised in Mountain View,
California in 2016. In order to increase speed,
two main factors were tested: (1) a redundancy
of fibres that could be quickly layered into the
structure without precise placement; and (2)
a slip-casting method used to continuously
pour jammable walls with modular moulds,
rather than printing and unmoulding the entire
structure at once.
Unlike masonry construction, the aim here
was to create a system that offered a faster
moulding process and eliminated the need
for reinforcement to provide tension within it.
Tension was achieved instead by the use of
loose coconut fibres within the rock deposition.
Through systematic testing it was discovered
that the following qualities were required for
the system to
work. The
rocks should be at
a minimum 13 millimetres (half an inch) in
diameter with relation to the size of the fibres
and the width of the mould. Coconut fibres
were
specifically
used to maximise the dry
friction between the fibres and were long
enough to be entangled with other members
while spanning the width of the wall.
The materials ...
