Hybrid Tower, Designing Soft Structures

This paper presents the research project Hybrid Tower, an interdisciplinary collaboration between CITA—Centre for IT and Architecture, KET—Department for Structural Design and Technology, Fibrenamics, Universidade do Minho Guimarães, AFF a. ferreira & filhos, sa, Caldas de Vizela, Portugal and Essener Labor für Leichte Flächentragwerke, Universität Duisburg-Essen. Hybrid Tower is a hybrid structural system combining bending active compression members and tensile members for architectural design. The paper presents two central investigations: (1) the creation of new design methods that embed predictions about the inherent interdependency and material dependent performance of the hybrid structure and (2) the inter-scalar design strategies for specification and fabrication. The first investigation focuses on the design pipelines developed between the implementation of realtime physics and constraint solvers and more rigorous Finite Element methods supporting respectively design analysis and form finding and performance evaluation and verification. The second investigation describes the inter-scalar feedback loops between design at the macro scale (overall structural behaviour), meso scale (membrane reinforcement strategy) and micro scale (design of bespoke textile membrane). The paper concludes with a post construction analysis. Comparing structural and environmental data, the predicted and the actual performance of tower are evaluated and discussed.