Author Archives: jhunter

Liberalism in Shell Structures

Project By: Jie Liu

The project focused on the potential of liberalism in component shell structures. The design starts from the stability of the graphic by using four triangle surfaces to create structural depth within the component. Assembling the components through hyperfine lines creates a continuous structural order to place the tennis court and related functional spaces. Loads are transferred through the axes of each components, together with secondary cable joists. The gaps between the components respond to sunlight, establishing the natural lighting system for the whole project.

Radiolaria Shell Structure

Project By: Lindsey Duthie

Radiolaria are unicellular microorganisms that live in the ocean. Radiolarians condense their structure according to the flow of forces by controlling the diameter of the individual bubbles intersecting their global sphere. Bubble clusters with a high amount of small diameter bubbles have a large amount of membrane surface, which finally results in a denser skeleton structure. The density of the skeletal structure reflects the amount of stress that can be carried within the structure. In this way radiolarians optimize the geometry of the grid of the skeletal structure according to the magnitude and the direction of the applied loads. Their siliceous skeleton consists of connected arrays of tubular struts forming a great variety of shells, often with a hexagonal structuring on their surfaces.

This project explores the architectural transfer of biological principles of the radiolarian’s skeleton morphology, in an attempt to achieve a material efficient structural timber system.

Planar Geodesic Gridshell

Project By: Jean Dieres Monplaisir

Since the work of Felix Candela or Pier Luigi Nervi in the 60’s, the use of structural shells has been very limited. This can be explained by their formal tendency to take precedent over the architectural program due to the small flexibility of their geometries. Hence, the shape of the building becomes that of the shell, a singular object, hardly integrated in its urban context and accommodating for little programatic spatial variations. This project intends to challenge the use of shells in the contemporary architectural context by attempting to break away from its formal dogmatism. Consequently, the shell needs to become a structural component that can be aggregated to generate spaces rather than being an omnipresent formal and programmatic driver. Multiple typologies were developed and connected to generate an articulated plan responding precisely to the need of the program. This approach also intended to mitigate the visual impact of the building on its surrounding residential neighbourhood. The structural mapping of these typologies consists of a double wood gridshell which members’ neutral axes are dictated by a set two dimensional curves following the shortest path separating a cross-referenced list of points located on the outer edges of the shell. Such curves were obtained by developing a script extracting pseudo-geodesic paths which present the peculiarity of being planar and thus allowing for an easier fabrication process while remaining close to the optimum change in radii of curvature of a pure three-dimensional geodesic.