
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.
Environmental Ceramics Merging the digital and the physical in the design of a performance -based facade system
Environmental comfort and space occupancy are essential considerations in architectural design process. Façade systems deeply impact both aspects but are usually standardized.
However, performance-based facade systems tackle these issues through computational design to devise non-homogeneous elements.
This work proposes a ceramic facade system designed according to a performance-based process grounded on environmental analysis and parametric design to allow adaptation and geometric variation according to specific building demands on environmental comfort and functionality.
In this process, the Design Science Research method guided the exploration of both design and evaluation, bridging the gap between theory and practice.
Positive facade environmental performance were found from digital and physical models assessment in terms of radiation, illuminance, dampness (with ventilation) and temperature.
Computational processes minimized radiation inside the building while maximized illuminance. Their association influenced on operative temperature, which dropped according to local dampness and material absorption.
Accordingly, this design process associates not only environmental comfort and functionality concepts but also adaptability, flexibility, mass customization, personal fabrication, additive manufacturing concepts, being an example architectural design changes in the 4th Industrial Revolution.
This paper presents the design research process of a performance-based facade system for contemporary office buildings and was developed in a Brazilian graduate course during the second semester of 2018.
Pantazis and Gerber (2018) highlight that facade panels are a complex component due to the combination of structural, environmental, functional and aesthetic parameters. Facade systems can also be analysed in terms of conceptual layers: building and design selected performance criteria.
This consideration leverages the need and importance of some performance aspects and is a reminder of the aspects that should have in-depth development (Emmit et al. 2004).
Differently from usual facade systems, in which the components are morphologically homogeneous and the solution is standardized, performance-based facade systems commonly take computational design to devise non-homogeneous elements that meet environmental comfort criteria and also relate to building internal functions.
Other essential criteria associated with industrialization aspects are embedded in the design process, such as adaptability, flexibility, and mass customization (Kolarevic 2003).
These characteristics are included in the use of additive manufacturing, which was considered in this design exercise.
Aiming at a system performance from those design criteria, this study embraced specific aspects and methods, such as material properties, environmental analyses and computational optimization.
A parametric process was deployed to synthesize all the constraints and conditions, assuring a personal, customized and replicable facade system.
The Design Science Research (DSR) methodology was applied in this study due to its characteristic of encompassing several methodological procedures with the potential to bridge the gap between theory and practice.
DSR emphasizes both the design and the evaluation of the artefact and its methodological procedures aim to obtain a solution to be generalized and replicated in similar situations (Dresch et al. 2015).
In comparison to traditional methods, the authors demonstrate that while these mainly describe and explore a research problem, DSR focuses on designing and creating systems that do not exist yet. The facade system proposed in this short-period research undertook this method, using design as a research process.
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.
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