FORM FINDING STRUCTURE INTUITION

One of the various strands of research of ZHA|CODE – Design of Shell structures – places itself within the argument for parametric design research to focus on methods that enable an operative pathway from intent to manifestation. The aim is to use physically-based parameters as effective constraints in design development. Integral belief to this is that conceptual design workflows should privilege real-time interaction between designer and the computational model.

Growth in the role of simulation in conceptual design and evaluation of building performance is coupled with need for architects to manage the dichotomy between high resolution geometries used in simulation and lower resolution, free-form manipulation friendly, CAD geometries. Equally, physical form-finding using hanging chains and associated architectural design methods

as pioneered by Antonio Gaudi and others is common knowledge among architects. Their digital simulation using particle-spring frameworks are also fairly established following the work of early exponents including Axel Killian (Kilian and Ochsendorf, 2005) and renewed interest amongst various academics in recent times.

Thus, the research aims to extend this work to adequately represent the complexities of scale, time-constraints and delivery mechanisms of contemporary architectural practises. This on-going research then concentrates specifically on:

- Design and approximate simulation of Shell structures using particle-spring methods and its correlation with FEA analysis. – Procedural modelling of large numbers of such shells.

- Pre-engineering rationalisation of such designs. – Preparation of such geometries for downstream production, and its fabrication / construction.

The research includes a published technical paper detailing a custom work-flow, use of Autodesk Nucleus technology & custom-code and it’s linking to Autodesk Algor, and its application in projects, mock-ups etc.

text by Shajay Bhooshan