TexFab Competition Winner Announced

Earlier this week, the jurors for TexFab selected the winner of the Skin Competition, a yearly competition sponsored this year by Zahner, Rigidized Metals and Buro Happold. This competition was also made possible by Research Assistants Phil Gusmano and Dan Vrana of University at Buffalo, SUNY.

The entry entitled 3xLP by Christopher Romano and Nicholas Bruscia was selected as the winner by the panel. The project will be fully realized by the engineers and fabricators at Zahner.

“We are extremely pleased to announce the Winner of the SKIN Competition: 3xLP (previously 2XmT). From a total of 68 entries from across the globe representing 14 countries on 5 continents were narrowed down to 4 finalists and 4 honorable mentions.

The first round jury consisting of Phil Anzalone, Maria Mingallon, Gregg Pasquarelli, Randy Stratman, and Skylar Tibbits conferred and decided that from the numerous entries, which posed a very challenging effort in their deliberation. The second round jury: Neil Denari, James Carpenter, Mic Patterson and Bill Zahner conferred and selected 3xLP for its clarity and overall project development.” —TexFab

This is the second year that Zahner has participated as a sponsor, and the first year that Zahner has agreed to fabricate the designed facade as a freestanding architectural installation.

Jury Round 1

In the first round, Randy Stratman of Zahner was among the five juror who selected 4 finalists to make mockups of their facade designs. Of what turned out to be the winning entry, Randy Stratman of Zahner stated that “from a practicality standpoint it looks like they are pretty far along. It looks like they already have a mockup. I’m a big fan of how small undulations or changing panels really have a dramatic impact from the viewing standpoint as you move around the building”.

Jury Round 2

Last week, the second round of jurors selected one entry to be produced by the fabricators and engineers at Zahner. Among the jurors were James Carpenter of JCDA, Neil Denari of NMDA, and Mic Patterson of Enclos and Bill Zahner of A. Zahner Company.

Entries

Of the 68 entries, there were four selected as finalists, and four as honorable mentions. Each of the designs has promise. We hope to see more of these get picked up by developers of the next few years.

Final Four

• 3xLP by Christopher Romano and Nicholas Bruscia
• Cellular Complexity by Kais Al-Rawi, Julia Koerner, Marie Boltenstern
• Robot Assisted Sheet Metal Shaping by Lik Hang Gu, Nathan Shobe, Qi Su
• Sense by Isak Worre Foged, Anke Pasold

Honorable Mentions

• Hydromorph, an adaptive strategy for flooding by Camden Greenlee and Brian Vesely
• per-Forming a single point incremental forming design by Jake Newsum and Ammar Kalo
• Evaporative Folding a cellular design by Jeana Ripple
• Organized Crime, a kinetic facade by Kyle Miller

The Winning Entry

Selected as the winner by the panel was the entry entitled 3xLP by Christopher Romano and Nicholas Bruscia of the University at Buffalo Department of Architecture. The project will be fully realized by the engineers and fabricators at Zahner.