Archive for a Paper Maker

A former drying shed on a mill lane, where the workshop has stood for four generations.

Archive no.: 017
Program: Climate stable store for eight tonnes of handmade paper, with a reading room
Area: 180 m²
Status: In design
Drawing set: 2 plates at 1:50

Site north
275° off sheet

PLINTH PRACTICE ARCHIVE · NO. 017 · SHEET 1 OF 2 Scale 1:50

FIG. 1 SECTION DD WITH FULL DIMENSION CLOUD. EVERY NUMBER THE HUMIDITY DEPENDS ON, LEFT VISIBLE.

PLINTH PRACTICE ARCHIVE · NO. 017 · SHEET 2 OF 2 Scale 1:50

FIG. 2 PLAN OF STORE AND READING ROOM. PAPER SLEEPS IN THE DARK HALF; PEOPLE READ IN THE LIT HALF.

The mill has made paper by hand for four generations, and the sheets it cannot bear to sell now weigh eight tonnes. Paper is an honest client: it tells you within a week if the room is wrong. The archive holds the store at fifty two percent humidity and sixteen degrees using thick walls, buried mass, and one small machine that mostly rests.

The working section carries its full dimension cloud, and we left every leader line in the finished drawing on purpose. Wall build ups, vapour lines, air volumes, shelf spans: several hundred small numbers, each one load bearing for the climate. A clean drawing would be a less true one. The annotations gather at the eaves like weather.

The reading room takes the north light through one deep window, sized so a full sheet can be examined flat without a lamp. Red appears twice in the whole set: where the section cuts the buried mass wall, and nowhere it does not have to.