Project: Nurbster III - Bartsters

Nurbster III - Bartsters

Installation for the exhibition Young British Architecture - New Designs from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL at the Jaroslava Fragnera Gallery, Prague Czech Republic, 2004

Client:British Council Czech Republic
Design: Marjan Colletti
Collaborators: Alex Kirkwood, Frank Gilks, Nat Keast
Assembling: Mark Exon
Manufacturing: Control Waterjet Cutting

The main exhibition design features six (plus one, the Nurbster I) laser-cut aluminium and water-jetted plywood display islands, presenting student work from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL London. Due to the work’s tantalising and teasing nature, the ‘Bartsters’ resemble hybrids between sailing-boats and insects, pleasingly cruising, and viciously creeping, into the imagination of both the students and architects visiting the exhibition. This construction adapts traditional Chinese timber construction techniques of cut-joint fittings without additional fixings for quick assembly and disassembly.
The Bartsters are designed with the possibility in mind to develop various typologies of interior and urban furniture designs that could be enlarged to private dwelling and public spaces.

The size and scale of the NURBSTERs locates them into the domain of interior and urban furniture design, which considers modularity and mass-production, as well as structural stability and tectonic presence. The NURBSTERs utilise state-of-the-art 3D CAD software packages to design precise ergonomic pieces to fit contextual, mechanical and bodily attributes. Furthermore, they can be applied to the research and the development of a smaller private housing unit and an open public structures. Again, the aim is to synthesise style and structure, ornament and engineering.