
The Airshell Prototype
This paper by Alessandro Liuti, Sofia Colabella, and Alberto Pugnale, presents the construction of Airshell, a small timber gridshell prototype erected by employing a pneumatic formwork.
Designers will always face the challenge of designing well-performing buildings using what are often conflicting and competing performance objectives. This thesis by Yassin Salah El-Din Ashour presents a workflow called the ‘creative optimization workflow’ using a Multi-Objective Optimization (MOO) engine called Octopus that runs within Grasshopper3D, a parametric modeling tool, and multiple simulation software. Developed as part of the workflow, the ‘creative optimization tools’ make MOO based solutions more accessible to the designer and enables the exploration and analysis of the solutions from a visual and analytical point of view.
Through the juxtaposition of extreme performing solutions, serendipity is created and the potential for better multiple performing solutions is increased. The application of the workflow on the retrospective design of two buildings, De Rotterdam and the Bow Tower, is presented. The developed workflow and tools help to reduce design latency through automated generation of design solutions, incorporate disparate performance domains including formal aesthetics and explore trade-offs of multiple solutions all within one platform.
This paper by Alessandro Liuti, Sofia Colabella, and Alberto Pugnale, presents the construction of Airshell, a small timber gridshell prototype erected by employing a pneumatic formwork.
In this paper by Gregory Charles Quinn, Chris J K Williams, and Christoph Gengnagel, a detailed comparison is carried out between established as well as novel erection methods for strained grid shells by means of FE simulations and a 3D-scanned scaled physical model in order to evaluate key performance criteria such as bending stresses during erection and the distance between shell nodes and their spatial target geometry.
In this paper by Frederic Tayeb, Olivier Baverel, Jean-François Caron, Lionel du Peloux, ductility aspects of a light-weight composite gridshell are developed.
In this paper by Julian Lienhard, Holger Alpermann, Christoph Gengnagel and Jan Knippers structures that actively use bending as a self forming process are reviewed.
Parametric Tools for Architects & Designers @2025
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