Category: experimentation

Assembly One Pavilion / Yale School of Architecture Students

© Chris Morgan Photography’
The Yale ‘Assembly One’ pavilion is the younger, smaller, more carefree sister to Yale’s building project – a 40-year old tradition in which first-year students design and building a house. It is the product of a seminar and design studio in which students focused on alternative ways in which contemporary buildings can come together and the potential architectural effects computational and material techniques can offer. The ‘Assembly One’ pavilion is designed to act as an information center for New Haven’s summer International Festival of Arts and Ideas and therefore was developed with the following characteristics in mind: dynamism, visual transparency and visual density.
   
© Chris Morgan Photography


Dynamism: The structure is suited to a performance festival – solid and massive from one angle, lightweight and almost entirely porous from another, it alternately hides and reveals its contents.
Visual Transparency: Constructed from thin  sheets, the pavilion opens up on two sides for ventilation and security, focusing views toward the festival’s main stage.
Visual Density: Over 1000 panels create shifting effects of reflection and color as visitors move around the pavilion, creating less of a timeless image of shelter than an unstable, engaging heart of the festival.











“We treated the tenets of digital fabrication as basic assumptions – our ability to efficiently produce variable and unique components and the cultural implications of moving beyond standardized manufacturing. But, we were less concerned with the uniqueness of the objects we created than on the novel types of tectonic expression they allowed.”The Festival Pavilion was designed and built by  students.

Project Founders: David Bench, Zac Heaps, Jacqueline Ho, Eric Zahn
Project Managers: Jacqueline Ho, Amy Mielke
Design & Fabrication: John Taylor Bachman, Nicholas Hunt, Seema Kairam, John Lacy, Veer Nanavatty
Design: Rob Bundy, Raven Hardison, Matt Hettler
Faculty advisor: Brennan Buck
Assistant: Teoman Ayas
Consultant: Matthew Clark of Arup, New York

Generous support was provided by Assa Abloy, the Yale Graduate and Professional Student Senate, and the Yale School of Architecture. The Pavilion is on view on the New Haven Green until the end of June.
© Chris Morgan Photography

Adaptive Construction: A timber tensile roof that adapts to loads


Structures have always been designed for an exact maximum stress; this type of stress, however, generally only occurs very rarely and then only for a short period. As a result a large part of the building materials used today therefore serves these extremely seldom peak loads and is effectively seldom used. 

The aim of ultra lightweight structures developed at the University of Stuttgart is therefore to achieve a drastic saving of materials and a better reaction to dynamic loads through an active manipulation of the structure. In the case of the Stuttgart wooden shell this manipulation is achieved through hydraulic drives: these drives rest on the points of support of the shell and generate movements that compensate in a specific way for deformations and material stresses caused by wind, snow and other loads.

Institute for Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design (ILEK) and Institute for System Dynamics (ISYS) of the University of Stuttgart in cooperation with Bosch Rexroth have realised an adaptive structure on a large scale for the first time. The shell made of wood is supported at four points. Three of these points can be moved individually by hydraulic cylinders and freely positioned in space. Sensors record the load status at numerous points on the structure. Targeted movements of the points of support counteract variable loads (for example through snow or wind) and thus reduce deformations and material stresses. Compared to conventional, passive structures this considerably reduces the use of materials for the shell. The load balancing takes place through a Rexroth control system which was especially developed for hydraulic drives. The core task of the control system is to implement the complex hydraulic control tasks of the shell structure. In this way the supporting structure can react to a change in the load status within milliseconds.

An active vibration dampening and the adaptation to changing loads can be applied in many areas of construction, for example in stadium roofs, in high-rise buildings, in wide-spanning façade constructions or in bridges. The results of the research project at the University of Stuttgart thus enable a completely new construction method which not only saves resources but at the same time also considerably increases the performance of supporting structures. The active dampening of dynamic loads (for example from the effects of wind, earthquake or explosions) namely enables not only a drastic reduction in weight but furthermore also reduces material fatigue and damage to the structure.

In order to be able to actively compensate loads and vibrations, these influencing factors initially have to be precisely recorded resp. predicted; a second step would be to calculate the necessary counter-movements in real time (and likewise promptly to implement them). Researchers from the University of Stuttgart developed simulation models for this purpose, enabling an exact prediction of the behaviour of the structure. The material stress as well as the vibration behaviour under static and dynamic exposure is thereby taken into account. These simulation models serve as a basis for the development of control concepts which calculate the necessary counter movements on load and vibration compensation depending on the recorded measured values. These movements are then precisely implemented through the hydraulics.

Read more about it Here and Here




Project participants: 
Institute for Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design (ILEK), University of Stuttgart 
Prof. Werner Sobek, Stefan Neuhäuser, Christoph Witte, Dr. Walter Haase

Institute for System Dynamics (ISYS), University of Stuttgart 
Prof. Oliver Sawodny, Martin Weickgenannt, Dr. Eckhard Arnold
Bosch Rexroth AG, Lohr a. Main 
Dr. Johannes Grobe, André Fella

Contacts: 
Stefan Neuhäuser: Tel.: 0711 685-63705, 
Martin Weickgenannt: Tel.: 0711 685-66960,
André Fella: Tel.: 09352 18-1010,