Stainless Steel Tubular Holiday Home Cantilevers Over Hill in Russian Art Park

Jennifer Hahn – Dezeen.com

Moscow’s chief architect Sergey Kuznetsov has completed a pipe-shaped cabin, constructed like the hull of a ship and balanced on the edge of a slope in Russia‘s Nikola-Lenivets Art Park.

The holiday home was conceived for the annual Archstoyanie festival, known as Russia’s Burning Man, and will remain in place after the event to provide accommodation for visitors of the outdoor art gallery, which is set in a nature reserve near the city of Kaluga.

Clad in a single, continuous sheet of stainless steel that reflects the surrounding forest, the building is 12 metres long and weighs around twice as much as a fully-grown elephant. But Kuznetsov claims its structure is held together using only six bolts.

“The idea was to create something with an element of magic,” he told Dezeen.

To create the impression of the cabin hanging in mid-air, its foundation is concealed inside a small hill that had to be almost completely demolished during excavation, before being rebuilt and reinforced with sand cushions.

Kuznetsov and construction company Krost devised the cylindrical structure mounted on top by drawing on a shipbuilding technique known as transverse framing.

In lieu of traditional wall studs, this involves a system of closely spaced, circular ribs that run along the length of the entire building.

Cut from sheets of stainless steel and connected by horizontal guides known as stringers, they create a strong yet lightweight frame that is able to support itself without breaking.

“The entire structure consists of six cylindrical modules, simultaneously manufactured and then connected to each other,” Kuznetsov explained. “The same thing happens in shipbuilding. Separate sections of the hull are made in the workshop before being assembled into a single structure on a dry dock.”

“The biggest challenge at this stage was to put the cylinders together – precisely, coaxially, with virtually no tolerances,” he added.