A group of graduate students called Team 01Para, from the MArch Design Research Laboratory course at the Architectural Association in London have sent us these images of a conceptual design called Snap! - Bistable Structure.

The team consists of Stella Nikolakaki, Sevil Yazici, Jesse Chima and Eugene Leung.

According to Leung, the project proposes a workspace that can be reconfigured using "the material behavior of Bistable Structure, aka curved spring metal found in common slap bracelets."

The concept was designed for software company SAP AG, for a site in Farringdon, London.

The information below is from Team 01Para:

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In the era of globalization, competition is fierce across the continents.  Adaptation, therefore, is not a fancy slogan, but a crucial concept for companies and their workplace.

Team 01Para, an AA Design Research Lab team, explores the material behavior of Bistable Structure, aka curved spring metal found in common slap bracelets.  Through rapid internal collapse, it possesses the capacity to deploy new architectural boundaries.  As a result, the conceptual proposal is an adaptive workplace, capable of self spatial reconfiguration based on changes in business structure, for SAP AG.

Alone, the spring metal is only stable in two states: when it is extended straight and when it is contracted into a coil.  The research, however, connects two layer strips together.  The connections provide resisting force and divide the strips into segments, therefore limiting and confining the collapse within the segments and domesticate what would otherwise be a ferocious collapse to the user-preferred way.  This design is patent pending.

Prototype models depicted in the photographs show how snapping at different segments at different sequences might result in different kinds of spatial cluster.  In the perspective renders, layered pairs and buckled curves suggest a form that is remote from the conventional paradigm of floor-slab repetitive office towers.

For more details of the project, visit www.01para.net.

Intelligent Bi-Stable Structure System is in the Patent pending process, with application number 0700710.7, infringes will be liable for all the damages caused.