Prefabrication embraces many topics: simplifying construction, making processes more efficient, coordinating practises in a factory setting and standardizing materials or systems. Among these themes, making building systems lighter engendered and continues to motivate innovation. Both architects and engineers have designed frameworks outlining optimal material use. Examples of optimum structures have repeatedly addressed spanning across great expanses with a symbiotic relationship between, shape, geometry and matter. Arches, vaults and domes are three building and geometry archetypes that illustrate the potential for shaping structural performance. The upward curvature imparts a vertical thrust that reduces tensile and horizontal stresses, making it possible to develop an efficient relationship between vertical rise and horizontal spans.
Grimshaw and Partners’ Eden project, a series of interrelated domes, showcases two of architectures enduring strategies to cover architectural space. Inspired by geodesic domes and inflatable structures, the architects designed a prodigious conservatory programmed for biosphere teaching and discovery. The structural concept by engineer Anthony Hunt was dictated by local weak soil bearing capacity; the greenhouse cupolas pose themselves daintily on sloped earthworks. Conceptually related to masters like Fuller and Nervi, Hunt argued for maximum result with minimal effort. The Eden domes employ a double shell triangulated truss construction repeating a tessellation of hexagonal shapes braced by ties and node anchors. The central argument for the use of geodesic domes continues to be small, light and easily transportable parts, and in this case, each component was modeled and calculated for their streamlined production.
Keeping the domes weathertight, luminous air-filled pillows add relatively little weight to the overall building. The greenhouse structure is entirely covered with a translucent skin composed of triple-layered inflated pads. Made of a state-of-the-art plastic foil, ETFE Ethylene tetra fluoro ethylene, the inflated casings’ edges are melded to create a perimeter border or lip that is inserted, sandwiched and compressed into a skylight type aluminum frame attached to the geodesic lattice. A network of gutters follows the underlying framework collecting water and directing it to perimeter collecting units.
The Biomes (bio domes) launched in 2001, pursue the same basic goal of answering Fuller’s famous dare: How much does your building weigh?
Conservatory structure and skin detail
No comments:
Post a Comment