t’karregat revisited, or wood pyramids

I think through drawing; I interpret as I reproduce.  The drawing above perfectly capture this, where I set out to draw an accurate representation of an existing floor plan and ended up drawing what I wanted to see.  The project in question is Frank V. Klingeren’s T-Karregat Center in Eindhoven, of 1973.  The original is a system of steel truss ‘trees’ that serve as both structure and building systems, in some Reyner-Banham-dream-come-true, culminating in large pyramidal skylights that provide the majority of the light to an otherwise free plan interior.

My interpretation keeps the modular system, but lays it out in a rigor more reminiscent of early SOM (Mitchell Hall at the US Air Force Academy), and imagines it rendered in popular-once-again heavy-timber framing.  The drawings below investigate the basic modularity, the nine square, and centering.