2018 AIASD Honor Award: Detail and Craftsmanship

Lamella Arch is a result of an exploration into adapting off the shelf, pre-manufactured boards and fasteners and leveraging the repetition of simple connection details to create a dynamic reciprocal structure. The structure was developed through trial and error via built 1:1 prototypes to understand the arches geometric relationship between the double mitered angled cuts, length of the individual “lamella” and how those factors corresponded to the overall arch radius.

The term, “lamella,” refers to the underside structure of a mushroom and was developed by German Architect and Engineer, Freidrick Zollinger just after WWI. It has been installed twice, once as a pop-up link on the South Dakota State University campus and now in its permanent home in McCrory Botanical Gardens where it reveals itself as a covered link between the formal rose garden and woodland garden.