Mafoombey explores the acoustics of cardboard

By Dianna Dilworth

Martti Kalliala and Esa Ruskeepää were college roommates while attending the architecture school at Helsinki University of Technology. The two students began to experiment with cut corrugated cardboard when they entered the open-to-all Habitare design contest at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki in 2005. The competition asked for a small space for listening to and experiencing music within the set dimensions of 2.5 cubic meters. Thus was born Mafoombey, a space for music.

Kalliala and Ruskeepää chose to work with cardboard for its aesthetics, acoustics, low cost, and mass production capabilities, after turning away from other materials like recycled carpets. “We decided to use the whole volume and make a free form space within the volume,” said Ruskeepää. “We also wanted to use a cheap material which could be stacked to make a huge pile.”

The structure consists of 720 hand-cut pieces of cardboard sliced horizontally, then stacked on top of each other with no adhesive. It was designed using 3D modelling and scale models with the help of architect friend Martin Lukasczyk. The space includes a sitting area for two to three people and a DVD player to play music. Energy-saving lights and surround-sound speakers are built into the 360-layered structure, with one central wire leading out to plug in for electricity.

The cardboard was donated to the students from Finnish paper manufacturer Stora Enso, in whose factory the students cut the pieces with a controlled knife cutter one-by-one. The design won the competition and was built, becoming the first built project for the 26-year old architects.

Mafoombey has garnered the emerging architects international acclaim. The project was highly commended at the Architectural Review Awards for Emerging Architecture in the UK in 2006 and was the fourth place nominee for the Nordic competition the Forum Prize 2005 in Sweden, placing alongside actual buildings like Zaha Hadid Architects’s Ordrupgaard museum extension in Gentofte, Denmark.

So far only one version of Mafoombey has been built, but collectors from Sweden to Japan have expressed interest in purchasing Mafoombeys of their own. The young architects also have plans to apply the corrugated cardboard material to build furniture or using the material as an acoustic insulating in lecture halls.

The three have been busy building their international resumes. All of them worked at Finnish firm Pekka Salminen in 2005 (where Lukasczyk still works). Kalliala also worked at Atelier Peter Zumthor Architects in Switzerland, and worked with OMA in the Netherlands for a year before returning to Helsinki to finish his degree. Ruskeepää also spent time with OMA, in the New York office for a semester before returning to Finland. Both students will graduate this fall. After graduating, Kalliala and Ruskeepää plan to design more projects together, enter more competitions, and see where the future of cardboard lies.

“Maybe one day we will establish a real firm,” says Ruskeepää, “ but right now it is important for us to work in really good firms and get a lot of international experience. If we have a firm we want it to be as international as possible.” Dianna Dilworth

 

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