MultiPly, an eight-meter-high, carbon neutral, timber pavilion, made exclusively from American tulipwood, has opened to the public in Madrid Rio at its entrance to the Casa de Campo, as part of the Madrid Design Festival. The installation was unveiled on the 1st of February and will remain open for two weeks. A collaboration between Waugh Thistleton Architects, the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) and ARUP, MultiPly responds to two of the greatest challenges of our time: the growing need for housing and the urgency to fight climate change, presenting as a solution the combination of modular systems and sustainable building materials.
“MultiPly is comprised of a maze-like series of interconnected spaces that overlap and intertwine. It has been conceived and constructed to encourage visitors to re-think the way we design and build our homes and cities. The three-dimensional structure is constructed from a flexible system of 12 cross-laminated timber (CLT) modules of American tulipwood with digitally manufactured joints, as if it were a piece of furniture ready to assemble. More importantly, the 32 cubic meters of tulipwood used for MultiPly stores the equivalent of 22 tonnes of carbon dioxide and is naturally replaced with new growth in the U.S. forests in less than two minutes,” said Roderick Wiles, AHEC Regional Director.
Because it is composed of modules, the construction can be disassembled and reassembled. It was first shown as a part of the London Design Festival in 2018, in the Sackler Courtyard of the Victoria and Albert Museum, then outside the Building Centre in London with New London Architecture, and then at the Universite deglie Studi di Milano, as part of Interni’s ‘Human Spaces’ exhibition at Milan Design Week 2019. Multiply is currently on display in Madrid for its fourth iteration.