[Assam] Any Structural Engineer in the Crowd?

[Chan Mahanta]

This is nothing new really. Architects often 
design arbitrary forms ( and why not?) and then 
manufacture justifications for it,sometimes 
tenuous, sometimes plausible, in order to answer 
to the crowd short on imagination.

Forms of nature have, throughout the ages, 
provided inspiration and ideas, for structural 
and architectural creations. Take the case of the 
leaf of a finger palm ( tokou) -- how the fingers 
of the leaves ( v-shaped in profile) inspired 
folded plate configuration for construction. The 
massive cantilever of the stem that withstands 
enormous stresses created by wind on the grossly 
disproportionate leaf surfaces -- is a study in 
itself.

Bucky Fuller's  geodesic dome concept was 
inspired by cell structures in nature.

Most shapes that inspired architecture and 
structure in the man-built environment however 
are geometric in nature. Reason being the 
limitation of construction materials and systems. 
Amoebic forms could not be economically justified 
easily due to such limitations. But once one can 
jump that constraint, of economy, one hardly 
requires any tortured ( or architortured) 
rationale to
manufacture and wave.













At 10:46 AM -0700 8/21/06, Dilip/Dil Deka wrote:
>Replicating the shape of cells to make it an 
>architectural feature is one thing but studying 
>the structural concept of nature's creation 
>(cells) and using it to produce simple and 
>strong structures is something else.
>Have structural engineers thought about it? Any 
>structural engineer in the crowd?
>Dilip
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Nature Inspires Building Design
>
>Home for new biomedical institute in China will feature attributes of cells
>
><http://pubs.acs.org/cen/staff/biosw.html>Sophie L. Rovner
>
>Architects sometimes turn to nature for 
>inspiration, but their focus is generally on the 
>macroscopic scale. The designers of a building 
>that will house the new Institute for 
>Nanobiomedical Technology & Membrane Biology in 
>Chengdu, China, have turned instead to the 
>microscopic scale: The building will incorporate 
>many features inspired by cells.
>    COURTESY OF SLOAN KULPER
>Biohaus Bulges protruding from the surface of 
>the cell-shaped building are meeting areas 
>designed to resemble proteins embedded in a 
>membrane (top). The interior features a garden 
>with pools shaped like mitochondria (middle) and 
>an atrium with bridges representing X and Y 
>chromosomes (bottom).
>Meeting areas whose windowed exterior walls 
>bulge from the surface of the cell-shaped 
>building will represent proteins in a cell 
>membrane. An interior garden will include pools 
>shaped like mitochondria and other organelles. 
>And the building will contain a crystal-shaped 
>lecture hall whose ceiling lights will be 
>arranged in the crystal diffraction pattern of a 
>protein. Construction of the $12 million 
>building, which will include many other 
>cell-like attributes, will start in 2007 or 2008 
>and will likely be completed by 2009.
>The design is the fruit of a collaboration 
>between <http://web.mit.edu/lms/www>Shuguang 
>Zhang, associate director of the Center for 
>Biomedical Engineering at Massachusetts 
>Institute of Technology; MIT graduates Sloan 
>Kulper and Audrey Roy; and architects at 
>Tsinghua University. Zhang is founding adviser 
>for the Chinese institute, which will be based 
>at Sichuan University, where he earned an 
>undergraduate degree in biochemistry.
>Kulper was majoring in architecture at MIT when 
>he took Zhang's course on the molecular 
>structure of biological materials, which 
>highlighted the parallels between architecture 
>and biological structures. After Zhang became 
>involved in the Chinese project, he sent Kulper 
>and Roy—at the time a computer science and 
>electrical engineering major—to Beijing for 
>three months to collaborate with the Tsinghua 
>University architects. "We worked with images of 
>proteins, membranes, and organelles alongside 
>photos and textbook images of glazing systems 
>and cantilevers," Kulper recalls.
>"Nature has produced abundant magnificent, 
>intricate, and fine molecular and cellular 
>structures," Zhang says. "If they can be 
>amplified billions of times, as in a building, 
>then these structures can be seen, touched, and 
>admired. At that large scale, they can also be 
>very educational." He hopes that this "first 
>molecular bio-architectural design" will 
>stimulate the creation of other buildings based 
>on biological structures.
>
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