(Un)Stable States
Pavilion and exhibition at IASS-IWSS Turin 2026
The research initiated during the
(Un)Stable States Workshop
was further developed at ENSA Versailles through Augustin Lecomte’s diploma project Matière à états: Enquête sur la fibre vulcanisée, supervised by Klaas de Rycke. This work was subsequently extended into the full-scale pavilion and exhibition (Un)Stable Structures – Intelligent Fabrication, presented at the
IASS–IWSS 2026
conference in Turin. Building on the workshop’s experiments with vulcanized fiber, the project advanced the investigation of its wet-to-dry transformation toward a spatial and structural prototype, exploring how a hygroscopic, shape-changing material can actively participate in the formation of curved rigid structures. The project received a Special Mention from the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS), with the jury recognizing it “for showcasing the transformative potential of a hygroscopic shape-changing material for curved rigid structures.” The pavilion and exhibition were developed through the collaboration of Paul Covillault, Aurore Champagne, Klaas de Rycke, Oriande Guidet, Augustin Lecomte, Blanche Bardin, Agathe Bourachau, Gervaise Mauriange, Adam Orlinski, Matthew Tam, Leopold Sepulchre, Moritz Heimrath, Elias Geser, Gonzalo Vaíllo, Lukas Allner, and Karolin Schmidbaur, bringing together the research at ENSA Versailles and the Halfforms project at the University of Innsbruck.