woodfest — dinosaur and tumble-up in csongrad

The Hungarian program of Wood Festival is similar to the Danish Woodfestival held in 2009 in Copenhagen. Last year Peter Pozsar, the curator of the Hungarian event got in touch with the Danish organizers and entered his students to the next competition. Due to financial problems the Danish festival was not held, so we at MOME line — design works thought that we could organize a parallel event with Hungarian university students.

The pinewood planks were used up down to the last centimeters as the first Hungarian Wood Festival came to an end in high spirits on Sunday. Not only the four required installations were finished but there was enough material left from the 4 kms of planks, offered by Jaf Holz, to experiment with some more structures and even to make a wooden Ujirany logo. The cut-off bits and pieces, instead of going to the rubbish, helped warm up the participants, who were chatting around the campfire on the closing night.

Students from three universities (Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design and University of West Hungary Institute of Applied Arts) formed four groups to work for a week under the supervision of a group leader each on structures exciting from the point of view of both architecture and art. All the pieces were in some way related to the environment of the host location, Csongrad Art Camp, which provided both accommodation and plenty of inspiration.

Peter Pozsar's group, sawing the 1000 m of planks into shorter and longer pieces, built a nest into the shroud of one of the younger trees. From there, snaking around its immediate environment, they continued with the structure to form a quadrilateral cave, as an allegory of the two housing archetypes. They chose an exciting way of securing the structures: instead of nails, they used strings running through drilled holes to hold together the planks.

Andris Huszar's less spontaneous, but more virtuoso group created a 3m egg-shaped structure, which will work as a tumble-up after being loaded it with sandbags: it will return to its original position, no matter how animated the swing is.

Not surprisingly, the most risky experiments were conducted by group leader, architect and inventor Aron Losonczi: his group left the planks their original size to create a multistory-high structure stretching far up towards the sky. Their other installation was a grid capable of bridging large distances - its strength was even tested on location.

We can say, however, that the most popular piece of the festival was the 17 meter dinosaur, made by Gabor Miklós Szoke's group. The peaceful herbivore was made based on a smaller model in only three days, by spontaneously screwing together planks of various sizes. Its head and tail is detachable, therefore we can welcome the dinosaur at the Design Week together with the other installations.

The Wood Festival was organized by MOME line — design works and Ujirany Architects.
MOME line — design works: www.momeline.hu
Ujirany Architects: www.ujirany.com

We would like to say thanks to our supporters and sponsors for making the festival possible:
NKA, JAF Holz Ungarn Kft., I Love Wood, Csongrad Chamber of Architects, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Simandi Bird&Bird Attorneys At Law

project team

Adam Kobrizsa and Maxim Bakos.

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