
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.
Approximating Computational Fluid Dynamics for Generative Tall Building Design
Background literature review, methodology, results, and analysis are presented for a novel approach to approximating wind pressure on tall buildings for the application of generative design exploration and optimisation.
The predictions are approximations of time-averaged computational fluid dynamics (CFD) data with the aim of maintaining simulation accuracy but with improved speed.
This is achieved through the use of a back-propagation artificial neural network (ANN) with vertex-based shape features as input and pressure as output.
Although computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has existed now for over 50 years and parametric CAD for over 30, both have seen an increased interest in architectural practice over the last decade.
However, in computational design, especially in generative exploration or optimisation, CFD remains a challenging simulation tool to integrate.
There are at least three reasons for this: firstly, the cost of expertise and software is high; secondly, the relationship between a design and its fluid environment is complex, often subtle, and esoteric; and thirdly, the time required to achieve accurate results is typically greater than that available, namely at early project stages when the guidance provided by the simulation is most valuable.
Effects of the wind upon buildings are numerous: for pedestrian comfort in surrounding proximity; ventilation and therefore thermal comfort and indoor air quality; and structural performance.
Wind loads, along with seismic, are the two primary external forces that increase with building height. Therefore tall buildings have been identified as a focal typology for this and a number of reasons.
The aerodynamic shape has a primary impact on these forces and therefore subsequently on the overall structural, material, energy, and financial performance.
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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