Structural analysis as driver in surface-based design approaches

Abstract

This ongoing research argues for novel strategies to integrate structural analysis data in an architectural design approach. Instead of a linear procedure of synthesis, analysis and post-rationalisation a synthesis/analysis loop is installed that uses structural analysis data as design driver from early on. The approach is not aiming for a pure force-driven form-finding or optimization process but regards structural performance as one design criteria among others. Equilibrium between multiple parameters is aspired instead of a singleparameter-optimum. The research is conducted by a custom-made digital interface between a 3d modelling software and an application for structural analysis of space frames structures. Surfaces are translated into meshes with supports at user-defined nodes and then exposed to its dead load in the structural analysis software. The resulting nodal deviation is feed into an algorithm that steers the appropriate reaction towards the local stresses and deviations, taking into account the mesh topology, its supports and their position in the mesh. The initial mesh is optimized in shape transformed back into a double-layer surface model in the 3d software which evolves into an interconnected two-layer space frame. An instant feedback from synthesis to analysis and vice versa is installed. Analysing techniques migrate into the realm of synthesis.