Olivewood pavilion Mass Imperfections

When objects are made by hand, no two things are exactly the same. The project Mass Imperfections by Local Industries and SCALES (research department of AAU ANASTAS) embraces this concept of human imperfections. They made a pavilion from olivewood modules that are made with a combination of hand and machine. No thirteen are the same.

Olivewood is commonly only available in small pieces, because of the gnarly way the trees grow, splitting and twisting. Moreover, the wood needs to dry for several years before it is ready to use.

The structure of Mass Imperfections is a 3 m high arch, made from 552 wooden pieces of 1 cm thick. The modules, which are small compared to the entire structure, have a flower-like shape with 6 vertices, which are connected to the neighbouring modules. The panels were free to rotate along the axis of the connections.

The pieces were constructed based on a template panel with a hand-powered 12-headed wood router by Luay Nassrallah, an artisan from Beit Jala. Rather than exact copies of the template, the pieces turned into approximations. However, every batch of twelve turned out the same, including all imperfections that were made in the process (see video). On the website of AAU Ansastas, you can see three more videos about this project.

The structure is a comment on the context of Palestinian woodworkers’ olive-wood artworks losing ground to imported and often mass produced trinkets and souvenirs sold to Holy Land tourists. In addition, it proposes a new kind of interaction between human and machine, in which the artisan plays a major role.

Mass Imperfections was exhibited during the Dubai Design Week 2016 (24 – 29 October).

Photos: AAU Anastas