Week 9: Building Form Ideas

I have been looking at geodesics for a while now, but I want to investigate if using the same arrangement of structural components over a more irregular form will achieve a better result.
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So to kick this off I first looked at constructing a simple elliptical dome to see how it performed.

This worked ok but there are some obvious problems, the structural components were a little too varied in length. I think this will cause problems later on as I'd like to keep things simple and easy by using the same sized components through out the dome.

Of course this issue could be rectified by increasing the number of panels over these areas, but I feel this is an inelegant solution and one that could end up in just a mish-mash of panels all over the place. Also such a technique could result in some panels being too irregular to be openable or waterproofed adequately

Not to give up to quickly on the whole irregular form idea I wanted to trial a few different forms for the skin to see how they could function.

The first I tried was an arched loft along the carparks length, the sort of worked, solidworks had some major issues with it though. it couldn't handle more than 3 profiles in the loft, so it kind of ran out of steam before I got to the main building. Also I wasn't completely sold on the structural side of things, it curves in one direction so it is strong enough but creating it out of shorter components might be an issue, and when it comes to the main building i think the size of the arcs needed to bridge the entire structure would be a little to large and tall, it's likely to be out of proportion with the current scale of the building.

I tried a few other variations on this theme and some elliptical domes (not pictured) but they just didn't have the right look about them, too many variables to adjust and too many collisions with the existing structure.

Then I tried a more regular dome shape (in plan) but bulged out the sides to created a toroid type shape. I thought this was rather promising as it allowed the existing building to be fully enveloped but didn't require the height and scale of a regular dome. For a little while I thought this was a good solution, but again, i wasn't completely sold on the structural integrity, I knew it would hold up (at least as a sing domed entity), but it may have required a centre support which detracts from the openness and free floating nature of the building skin.

There is also the problem of waterproofing the setup, with such a shape you end up getting a major pool in the centre of each toroid, which would either have to drain down that centre column I didn't want or it would require a flying roof over the top to enclose it all. Again I felt it was getting too complex, its fine for a single dome structure, but I was to be putting quite a number of them together which would have compromised them.

Sources: [Original Works]