DIGITAL DESIGN AND FULL SCALE FABRICATION ‘18

Rapidly assembled bending-active structure

Efilena Baseta / Andrei Gheorghe

 

Research background

Active-bending is an efficient construction technique for temporary, free-form structures is which has been used since antiquity. This method exploits the elastic bending of thin elements in order to create curved forms.

The course will be based on a research developed within the university, which proposes an alternative active-bending system. A latter system embeds the stiffeners in the building components themselves, by inserting geometry constraints. Thus, an independent relation between the maximum curvature and the stiffness is achieved. The resulted system facilitates the erection and the reusability of temporary structures.

Brief

Given the above, the course will investigate the rapid construction of a 1:1 free-form temporary structure. The aim of the course is to combine physical and digital processes. As a result, the creation of the final structure will rely on initial draft paper models as well as computational design methods and digital fabrication techniques. Important parts of the workflow will be:

• - The creation of quick paper models
• - The design of a developable surface using Physics simulation (Kangaroo)
• - The structural analysis and optimization of the proposed structure using FEM analysis (Karamba 3D)
• - The production of the fabrication files
• - The digital fabrication of the components
• - The assembly of the final 1:1 structure

 

Schedule

The workshop will take place as a blocked period during the mornings (9:00 – 13:00) from the 10th until the 13th of December 2018.