DESIGN, ENGINEERING, PRODUCTION & REALISATION OF GLASS STRUCTURES FOR ‘FREE-FORM ’ ARCHITECTURE

Structural designers are confronted in the last decade with architectural spatial schemes that greatly benefited from the aid of computer-operated design and modelling programs like Maya, Rhino and 3D-Studio Max. These architectural designs are referred to as ‘Fluid or Liquid Designs’ or ‘Blob Designs’. They contain sculptural building forms in an arbitrary geometrical form which is not developable mathematically or to be generated easily, even by computer. These building forms do not have a systematic and recognisable repetitive structure, either. The gap between architects and structural engineers seems to open wide at first in each project and an even larger gap appears between architects, technical designers on the one hand and co-engineers, producers, co-makers, sub-contractors and builders a little later in the same project. In the structural glass building parts, with its tight tolerances and high degree of prefabrication an enormous effort is necessary in the engineering phase to define accurately all individually shaped building components. This will definitely transform ‘production ’ into ‘co-engineering & production’. What is the most appropriate approach for structural design of components in these ‘Liquid Design ’ concepts? What agreements and working discipline have to be developed for applying the existing knowledge of industrially produced components into highly individualised components ‘produced in lots of one ’ that together form these highly irregular sculptural ‘Liquid Design ’ building envelopes? The introduction of this new view on architecture is more or less a revolution in the world of structural designers