students: Anastasia Fragkoudi, Peerapong Suntinanond
The seminar of experimental structures was studying new techniques of construction and the potentials that they can offer. Flexible structures, innovative materials, variety of design and construction solutions, distribution of acting forces to a network of micro elements are some of the advantages that experimental structures offer. The final assignment of the seminar was the proposition of an innovative structure that would be based on new techniques of construction.
The intention was to use an experimental structure for the project of the research studio II, a skyscraper of 10.000 inhabitants. Since the location of the project was Makkah in Saudi Arabia, a city that is located in an extremely arid and hot environment, the research began by studying organisms that survive in extreme environmental conditions, such as deserts.
Cacti are representative examples of plants that are adapted to extremely arid and hot environments. The structure, development and function of their cells allow them to survive for a long period of time without water. Cactus cortex is divided into an inner water-storing region and an outer photosynthetic layer. Water-storage cells have thin, flexible walls that can contract or shrink readily such that the cell’s volume diminishes as water is transferred out. An unusual feature in the evolution of cacti is the production of a cell called wide-band tracheid (WBT). These are short, broad tracheids whose secondary wall has either an annular or a helical pattern but is never scalariform, reticulate or pitted. The main role of WBTs is water storage. Because the secondary wall is either annular or helical, most of the primary wall is unlignified and unobstructed so water can enter and leave the cell easily, but more importantly, the rings of the annular type and the helix of the helical type do not hold the WBT to a rigid, fixed length. As the cell loses water, the thin, flexible primary wall can simply bend inward between the rings or gyres of the helix and the cell becomes shorter. No matter how much water the WBT gives up to surrounding tissues, its own volume can shrink to match the volume of water left.
The final project of the seminar is based on the anatomy of the specific cell of the plant cactus. The structure of the component is based on a curve that by multiplying forms a closed surface. This surface can be analyzed in horizontal rings and vertical curves. The vertical curves are 6 in number and are developed in such a way that each one of them forms a 60o degree angle from the centre of the initial surface. Because of its symmetrical form every component is self-sustained.
Although it can vary in forms the way the component behaves when acting forces perform on it stays the same; when it is compressed in vertical axis its vertical curves tent to bend rotating in the same angle, when it is compressed in horizontal axis its vertical curves tend to stretch, when acting forces perform on the surface of its rings the structure tends to pull outwards. What differs is the amount of distortion, which depends on the form of the component and the material that it’s constructed of.
By multiplying infinite times the component a self-sustained structure is formed distributing acting forces and attributes to all of its parts, just like the cells of the plant cactus that they are all working together behaving as a single organism. The component can be manipulated, scaled, stretched or compressed offering a variety of formations.
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