The development of three-dimensional trusses, space and trellis frames, from corresponding, dimensionally coordinated and repeatable linear components patterned to cover and limit architectural space is linked to iconic names in architecture: Fuller, Wachsmann and Le Ricolais explored the links between geometric archetypes and building structures. The three engineers/architects/industrialists/inventors are synonymous with large spanning frames articulating a symbiotic relationship between structural form and architectural space through reducing material use; maximum span with minimal weight. Founded on the principles explored earlier by Alexander Graham Bell, the triangular pyramidal truss is an inherently stable modular unit aggregated, clustered or amassed to shape lightweight frames that distribute structural constraints throughout their composing elements and reticulated network. Fuller's geodesic domes, specifically the double shell domes used a triangular pyramid, the tetrahedron, to fashion form and space. Its compositing equilateral triangles seen as a simple metric for elemental fabrication. These robust, triangulated and filigree structures were used to posit new designs for housing, factories, exhibit edifices, and most surprisingly as enclosures for futuristic cityscapes.
Inspired by Fuller's great circles and by mentor Yona Friedman (famous for his aerial megastructure city proposals), David Georges Emmerich united reticulated structural form with his singular vision of building new cities over existing ones. Involved with groups like the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) and a founding member of the Groupe d’Études d’Architecture Mobile (GEAM) in 1957, Emmerich envisioned space frame structures as an opportunity to develop mobile, flexible, adaptable and everchanging megastructures in response to the rapidly evolving modern city. His representations of Coupoles Stéréométriques present the links with both Fuller and Friedman. The «coupoles» or domes, imagined as simple to assemble shells, would enclose multi-level neighbourhoods floating within the overarching limits of pure structural form. Patent drawings provide a clue to the simple building methods that would reform cities and buildings. In a similar way to his contemporaries who explored the potential of mass-produced components to solve housing crises and offer a way forward for stagnating city form, the structuralist vision of at once covering, limiting, controlling, relating and measuring «stéréométrie» architectural space remains a unique reverie of the post-industrial city.
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| Stereometric Domes and patent drawings for domes |
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