Читать книгу Rethinking Prototyping - Группа авторов - Страница 100

The developed structure answers to different and irregular column positions, geometries, and its high level of recognition in an optimal way to the design task given by the Messe Frankfurt. The roof structure sought to be an alternative approach to a hierarchical organization of structure or conventional proportional systems. Structural purity would have been the wrong answer to the design challenge since the particular requirements of a complex site needed to be taken into account. The developed algorithms for the girder configurations with subsequent structural optimisation is intuitive but cope with the given optimisation problem, as the behaviour of the given structure - a cantilevering canopy - is quite predictable. The design process blurred the boundaries between design development and design-tool development. The lacking automated feedback loop between geometry generation and its structural and geometrical analysis prevented exploring a larger solution space and showed the need for further development of design tools. A series of comparable projects lead to a collection of tools, all of them highly project specific and therefore of limited use for following endeavours. The experience of linking parametric and structural design for this and several other similar projects designed at this time showed Bollinger + Grohmann Ingenieure the need to consolidate and formalise the acquired knowledge and tools. The effort could not be conducted within project-driven research because of limited budget and time. Thus, the idea of integrating structural design tools into a parametric design environment became a joint venture of the engineering office and the department of structural design of the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. The fruitful collaboration yielded Karamba, a Finite Element programme for the early design phase. The software is fully embedded in the parametric environment of Grasshopper, which makes it easy to combine parameterized geometric models, finite element calculations. Structural parameters become integral design drivers from early on instead of constraints in later design phases. The digital model becomes more than pure geometry representation; it is informed with structural capacities. The parametric design approach allows for geometric variation combined with the immediate structural analysis we are able to generate site-specific structure beyond preconceived typologies.