IBOIS is the laboratory for timber construction at the swiss federal
institute of  technology in Lausanne, Switzerland.  This project is about
the interior design of the office part of the lab. The major piece of the design
is a conference room built of wooden shelves. While the conference room itself
is a closed entity by walls. The shelves do not follow one by one the geometry
of the conference room. Now and then, the shelves are detached from the wall
in order to create working areas, once for photocopies, else for servers.

The whole object is seated like a box in the 300sqm office space of the lab.
Its geometry is based on a soft and free form that adapts itself to the
surrounding space. It defines different spaces like the entrance, the major
working space, the place of the secretary, etc.

The final shape is built in a 3D-model which is then subdivided into shelves
that are each of different size and shape. The nearly 600 different pieces were
manufactured by an automated cutting machine. The link between the design
and the material production becomes really short due to modern integrated
production processes.

2005, project by:

Prof. Y.Weinand, IBOIS, EPFL
Dipl. arch. EPF Fred Hat, IBOIS, EPFL
Dipl. arch. EPF Ivo Stotz, IBOIS, EPFL
Dipl. arch. ETH Andri Gartmann, IBOIS, EPFL
Dipl. arch. HES Jean-Daniel Gendre, IBOIS, EPFL
Fran�ois Staub Eb�nisterie, Aclens