Experimental Structure Seminar

[Modelling Boundaries]

Since the end of the 19th century, technological improvements have broadly changed architectural expression by exploring new materials associated with their structural arrangement suitability. The effects on the design practice have resulted in a close collaboration between architects and engineers. This collaboration has implicitly always been based on the role of the structural engineer to support the architects in the design of forms capable to safely fit in a defined function. Thus, engineering has been developing appropriate models to grasp at a complex reality. From graphic statics to current numerical tools based on structural theories and material characterisation, an invisible flow of forces can be modelled with enough accuracy to both qualify and quantify a structural behaviour.

Ironically [or logically], most of audacious and innovative structural propositions went to explore the boundaries of such existing models of representation. Without theoretical models of prediction, the design partners have referred to experimentation with physical ones. Through lightness or flexibility, pioneers intuition pushed the limits of an established knowledge based on a restricted idea of solidity.

A strong “form / force / material” coupling can lead to structural systems for which the geometry can not be determined without considering internal forces and material properties. Functional applications of such systems can be observed in nature and reveal a complex interaction of resistance, flexibility and adaptation. Consequently, the efficiency of numerical tools through digital modelling for example is drastically reduced if we are unable to consider those complex couplings. The virtual power depends finally on a perception of reality defined by physical and theoretical models.

The emergence of sustainable and self sufficient design as an increasingly important parameter in engineering and architecture questions our modelling boundaries. The resulting complexity of the design process involves multi-disciplinary interactions that might lead to evolutionary processes and forms radically different from current engineering practice. It demands a softer, more long-term approach to resources and forces in order to develop adequate strategies of adaptation. In other word, forms might become more elastic and spring-like to respond in a more flexible way to changing forces, they might develop strategies to adapt to extreme forces without experiencing collapse or they might use the energy and forces exerted onto them for their own growth, stability and functions. Forces are not primarily seen as single static values but as patterns which change depending on the geometric or functional response of the building. These forms blur the issue of collapse, they are safe not through resistance and stiffness but maybe through lying low or through participation.