After a successful collaboration, our French colleagues offered us the opportunity to participate in the annual experimental festival, named "Bellastock", they were organizing on behalf of the university they went to in Paris (*ENSA).

The festival deals with a different material each year, this restriction forces the participants to invent new ways to manipulate it and connect it together.

examples to material from earlier years: wood plates, beer boxes and sand bags.

The festival of 2011 dealt with pneumatic** structures. The materials we were allowed to use were only plastic sheets  in different transparencies and duct tape to join them together. These materials forced us to work with layouts. 

There were two sets of techniques- single skin, which means the structure is like a balloon, in which the user is interacting with the flowing air. The second technique was double skin, the air is flowing between two layer and doesn't interact with the user. 

A few months prior to departing to Paris, we formed a team of students, led by Arch. Ohad Yehieli. We studied the materials and the connecting options, formulated conceptual models and created their layouts. we understood very early on, that the double skin system is more "expensive" material-wise and it has a bigger potential for error (more connection points).

When we got to Paris, we started copying the layouts to the materials and connecting them according to the plan. Later on we connected it to the main bellows and watched it become a charming structure. Most of it was opaque, with a few see-through-stripes that functioned as "windows" into the object.

After the festival ended the organizers chose our structure to display the festival achievements.

The following year, all the knowledge acquired at the festival helped the organizers of the annual spring workshop to create one that revolves around a similar theme (pneumatic structures).

* ENSA -  École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris-Belleville

** pneumatic - containing or operated by air or gas under pressure.