Why teach
architecture students about traditional boat design?
There are a variety of benefits to exploring parallel design disciplines,
particularly those that operate within similar strictures to architecture. The
design of a boat considers the environment and context that a boat will sail in,
climatically, economically, socially and in terms of the available local
materials and skills. Those elements are brought together to design something
that will be used in that specific area. This is how traditional boats were
created and how many racing classes came about, they are some of the
elements that are close to architecture and distinguish the exercise from
industrial design.
The design of a boat is a master-class in the drawing of curves, architects
are often quite crude with curves, dynamic curves are refined, practiced and
purposeful, every aspect of a sailing boat and its performance has refined
curves. The process of designing a boat, from first sketches to outlining and
sanding a half model to preparing balanced lines plans requires an attention to
dynamic curves that have a direct consequence to both the behaviour of the boat
and the ease of its construction. Some curves are better refined in 2d while
others benefit from a three dimensional appreciation. Every plan, section and
elevation of a boat are necessary to describe the complex curves of a boat’s
form. In practice the students struggled with controlling curves during early
surveys but have become more adept and confident with splines and the balancing
of volume and stability using manual and computer based tools, new tools to
them.
Sailing boats as structures are a balancing act of competing forces all
delicately counter balanced against each other, a kind of ever-changing model of
timber, shells, beams, ribs, stringers, braces, knees and laminates. But the
crucial difference with most forms of architecture is that they are dynamic
structures subject to changing, unpredictable, sometimes extreme forces. In
dynamic structures the weight, strength and elasticity of materials all have
different consequences not only for the use of the boat but its longevity,
maintenance and safety. Oversizing of structure, ‘to be on the safe side’, often
does not work. The use of bracing or reinforcing with steel, common practices
for strengthening buildings tends to work against the unity and flexibility of a
boat design.
On another level it is about learning about wood, when you learn about wood
for architecture you are told things but you don’t feel them. You are told a
timber is durable for 60 years, ok....you are told a timber is suitable for
reducing spread of flame or will have a suitable core strength if seasoned,
ok.....but when you go sailing in a timber boat and you lean out against the
heel of the wind and the boat twists beneath you, creaks but doesn’t break, and
you go through a wave and the bow rises you feel the qualities of the wood, if
you feel it you’ll remember it. Sometimes it takes the senses to activate the
imagination, there is fun, risk and a romantic quality to taking to the water
that changes one’s perspective on life. Space and comfort are minimal, every
movement is defined by the design of the parts around you, visibility and
balance are vital, you are relatively in control but subject to the conditions
you find yourself in, a conditional vehicle.
Carlo Scarpa said that as architects we should concern ourselves with what
we touch, there’s a lot of touching in boats.
Renzo Piano is a keen sailor and this seems to influence some of his buildings, he also designed interesting boats for himself, Kirribilli (I & II) with some novel details.
Some of Renzo Piano Building Workshop's buildings with naval architecture references, refined curves, hull forms, rib structures, chines:
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