Oxford Brookes students help bring EWAP projects to life

Over the summer of 2024 five students undertook an internship with the Endangered Wooden Architecture team. Here we present the work of two of those interns.

The final built model of the Burmese teak farmhouse © Matt Philips, 2024

Matt Philips, a recent graduate of the School of Architecture, was tasked with building a scale model of one of the Burmese teak houses from a recently completed EWAP project conducted by the World Monuments Fund in Myanmar (Project archive can be found here). He decided to use a 1:20 scale as this was a manageable size but also allowed for the internal spatial areas to be clearly defined and for embellished contextual elements. As part of the original Burmese Teak Farmhouse Project 20 houses were recorded and deposited in EWAPs Archive. From the 20 houses, Matt decided to focus on a two-story residential farmhouse in Shan Kalay Kyun Village, Mandalay Division (EWAP1046SG-STR-004). The house is over 50 years old and built using woods such as teak and Shorea oblongifolia. Matt proposed to create a model that you can split in half to see the internal layout as well as the external structure.

Sketch and digital model of the Burmese teak farmhouse © Matt Philips, 2024

The next stage was creating a digital model, using AutoCAD and Rhino, of all the elements that would need to be built and examining how each element fits together. Much of the work included examining the photographic evidence to see, for example, how the roof was finished or how the roof beams fitted together. When building the physical model, Matt used mdf and plywood board, wooden dowels and even coffee stirrers, as well as using the School of Architecture’s 3D printer to add people, animals and furniture. The final model is a great lifelike imitation of one of these important endangered buildings that will be used in promoting the programme over the coming years.

The second project was conducted by Yanheng Lew, a recently graduated student of the MArchD Applied Design in Architecture in the School of Architecture. He was tasked with generating a 3D construction model of one of the structures recorded as part of the Tamang Heritage trail project conducted by CRS Nepal, which recorded traditional houses in the village of Gatlang in northern Nepal. The two-story residential buildings are made predominantly from pinewood with an outer layer of dry-stone masonry. Like Matt, Yanheng had to examine the archival material from the project to see what structures to model and examine how the buildings were put together, to see which elements he could reconstruct digitally. He started by plotting the different sequences for the video. This included a sequence that peeled away the different elements starting from the roof to reveal the internal layouts and construction details of each floor.

Video idea for the first sequence of the row of houses in Gatlang © Yanheng Lew, 2024

Over the course of July, Yanheng worked on building the row of houses, using different textures and layers to construct a lifelike model. In particular, he focused on one of the houses that had a wooden window with elaborate carvings and on the joints of the roof. Due to time constraints the model has focused on the wood, as the primary focus of EWAP, and not the stone elements. The short video produced was an interesting exercise to test the possibilities of creating a construction sequence from the archival material.

You can watch the final video by clicking the image below.

Many thanks to Matt and Yanheng for joining us this summer and for their hard work. These internships were supported by the Endangered Wooden Architecture Programme (EWAP), Oxford Brookes University, and funded by Arcadia, a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage and promote open access to knowledge.

More to come about our other Interns!