Spatial Structures 2020/21 Conference Report

John Abel. As a Professor at Cornell University from 1974 to 2004, John Abel’s research was focused on the development of numerical approaches to problems in structural engineering, primarily in the field of spatial structures and frequently with pioneering applications of emerging interactive computer graphics to visualize behaviour and design. Between 1980 and 2000, he supervised twenty Ph.D. dissertations that entailed research on reinforced concrete cooling towers; timber framed domes; the dynamics and stability of shells and frames; shape finding and the design of cable-reinforced membranes; nonlinear stress analysis and fracture analysis of shells; and nonlinear dynamics and control of spatial structures. These works resulted in over 200 technical papers and reports. Professor Abel joined the IASS in 1972, was elected to the IASS Executive Council in 1985 and served as Vice President 1991–2006, President 2006–2012, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the IASS 1996–2007, and Chair of the Website Committee 2005–present. He was Chair of the Scientific Committee for the IASS-ASCE International Symposium in Atlanta 1994 and was General Chair and host of the 6th IASS-IACM Conference on Computation of Shell and Spatial Structures in Ithaca (NY) 2008; and he co-edited the proceedings of each. John also produced and co-authored the IASS 50th Jubilee Book, Fifty Years of Progress for Shell & Spatial Structures, 2011. He was honoured with the IASS Torroja Medal in 2013.

Sigrid Adriaenssens. Sigrid’s research interest lies in the mechanical interaction between flexible, semiflexible and rigid surface systems and static and dynamic loading and the advancement of shape generation approaches based on analytical formulations, numerical form finding, optimization, fluid/structure interaction models and machine-learning techniques. This research has focused on the optimization of the design and behaviour of membranes, shells (both continuous and lattice) subjected to earthquake, storm surge and environmental loading, and more recently robotic construction constraints. In 2021, she was named Fellow of the Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) ‘for her seminal contributions to the understanding of the mechanics of large-scale shells and membranes through the development of methods for form-finding, analysis, and optimization. . .’ and she received the 2018 George Winter Award (ASCE) for her work at the intersection of engineering and the arts. Today she (co)chairs the ASCE Esthetics [sic.] in Design Committee as well as the Concrete Shell Roofs Working Group (International Association of Shell and Spatial Structures). She directs the Form Finding Lab at Princeton University and teaches classes on (non-)linear mechanics of solids and slender structures, structural design and the integration of engineering and the arts.

William Baker. Bill is a structural engineering consulting partner at SOM. He works to extend the profession of structural engineering through research and creating design approaches that lead to more efficient structures. Bill has led the structural engineering design of many structures including the world’s tallest manmade structure, the Burj Khalifa. He is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering and an International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He has received honorary doctorates from the University of Stuttgart, Heriot-Watt University, the Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of Missouri. His awards include the Gold Medal from the IStructE, the ASCE Outstanding Projects and Leaders Lifetime Award for Design; the Gustav Magnel Gold Medal from the University of Ghent; the Fazlur Rahman Khan Medal from the CTBUH; the Fritz Leonhardt Preis; and the Torroja Medal from the IASS. He has been interested in geometry and lightweight structures since he was a student. In recent years, he has focused on adapting fundamental engineering mechanics to the design of structures. This includes the creation of visually based design tools for light-weight structures and applications of Maxwell’s Load Path Theorem, discrete Michell Trusses, graphic statics for topology optimization, Airy stress functions for the design of grid-shells and maximizing states of self-stress for 2D structural layouts.

Olivier Baverel. Olivier is a professor at the Ecole des Ponts ParisTech and professor at the Grenoble School of Architecture. He is a researcher at the Navier and GSA laboratories and co-editor in chief of the International Journal of Space Structures. His research focuses on the rationalization of structures with complex geometry in order to reduce their cost and their environmental impact. He believes that geometry is a fundamental knowledge for the structural engineers. For instance, Voss surface allows the generation of structures with geodesic lines and flat quadrangular panels that give a structure easily buildable with simple planks. Olivier has developed innovative construction systems, such as gridshells with Glass Fibre Reinforced Polymer that were used for the construction of Creteil Ephemeral Cathedral in 2013. He developed Nexorades structures in his thesis and moved further with the concept of Shell-Nexarode where the flat bracing panel makes the nexorade behave as shell. Olivier has published 148 scientific papers and is a member of the executive council of the IASS.

Michael Cook. Mike began his career working at Ove Arup with Ted Happold and Frei Otto, testing models of the Mannheim timber lattice grid-shell. Graduating from Cambridge in 1977, he worked at the University of Bath on a PhD titled ‘The Design of Air-supported Structures to Resist Wind Loading’. Between 1976 and 1994, Mike worked for Buro Happold in Bath on many diverse membrane structures in the UK, US and Asia. In 1985, he was Resident Engineer for the Hong Kong Cultural Centre roof – a lattice-shell formed by casting concrete around a catenary cable-net. From 1994 he ran Buro Happold’s London office and became Project Director on a series of notable spatial structures, in collaboration with Foster+Partners. These included: The Great Court roof at the British Museum, London; The Sage Centre roof in Gateshead, UK; the roof for the Smithsonian Gallery of American Art in Washington DC; The Pyramid of Peace and Reconciliation, and The Khan Shatyr, both in Astana, Kazakhstan. In 2019, he initiated the Engineers’ Declaration of Climate Emergency in the UK, and he leads the Institution of Structural Engineer’s Climate Emergency Task Group. He is Professor of Creative Design in the Department of Civil Engineering at Imperial College, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Gold Medallist of the Institution of Structural Engineers, and has an Honorary Doctorate of Engineering from the University of Bath.

Ken’ichi Kawaguchi. Ken’ichi is a professor in the Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo. He graduated from Waseda University in 1985 and finished his PhD at the University of Tokyo in 1991 with a thesis on the theory of kinematically indeterminate structures. During his PhD he had been deeply involved in development and design of a tension truss dome, which was completed also in 1991. In the same year he published a book, in Japanese, including a part of his thesis and generalized inverse theory, with Professor Yasuhiko Hangai. Since his PhD, he has been involved with both theoretical work and practice. One of the examples of his theoretical works is folding analysis of space frames, which was presented in the conference of ‘Space Structure 4’ in 1993. He also designed and constructed typical tensegrity structure, White Rhino I in 2001, in which tensegrity frames are serving as structural elements to support a membrane roof. This development was reported in ‘Space Structure 5’ in 2002. He developed a new type of seismic base-isolation systems for houses. He also developed new guidelines for safety measures against accidental fall of suspended ceilings published from AIJ. He did the fundamental structural design for a new faculty building of engineering in the University of Tokyo, and also designed another tensegrity structure White Rhino II in 2017. All these achievements are based on his three-dimensional approach to structural engineering. He is currently a vice-president of IASS and a chair of WG6, working group on tension and membrane structures. He is also one of the founders of the IASS Hangai Prize.

Jan Knippers. Jan is a consulting structural engineer and, since 2000, Head of the Institute for Building Structures and Structural Design (ITKE) at the University of Stuttgart. His interest is in innovative and resource-efficient structures at the intersection of research and development and practice. He co-developed a robotic winding process for fibre composite systems that enables novel lightweight building systems as used in the Fibre Pavilion at the Bundesgartenschau 2019 in Heilbronn and the Maison Fibre at the Biennale Architettura 2021 in Venice. Another of Jan’s interests is advanced timber structures for segmental shells or multi-storey buildings. In addition to this, he designed the Central Axis for EXPO 2010 in Shanghai, one of the largest membrane structures of the world, and the compliant façade for the Thematic Pavilion at EXPO 2012 in Yeosu, South Korea. Jan published his works in several books and numerous scientific publications. From 2014 to 2019 Jan Knippers was coordinator of the research centre TRR141 ‘Biological Design and Integrative Structures’ a collaboration between the Universities of Stuttgart, Tübingen and Freiburg. Since 2019 he is Deputy Director of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Integrative Computational Design and Construction’ and Vice-Rector for Research at the University of Stuttgart.

Carlos Lázaro. Carlos is an Associate Professor in Structural Mechanics of the School of Civil Engineering at the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Spain. He has combined his experience as a professional structural engineer and his research activity in the field of lightweight and flexible structures, concrete technology, and computational mechanics to carry out designs of outstanding spatial structures and bridges. He is currently president of the IASS and has coordinated the technical activities of the twelve active IASS working groups. The hypar shell roof at Oceanographic in Valencia (2000) was his first well-known project: the realization of Felix Candela’s last shell using fibre-reinforced concrete. Within his firm CMD Ingenieros (2006-2014) co-founded with A. Domingo, he had a major role in the design of spatial structures such as the Pantadome roof of the arena at X tiva (2007), the 90 m span dome of the Parliament building in Kutaisi, Georgia (2013) (both in collaboration with M. Kawaguchi), a patented movable structure for a solar tracker, and the 130m high Alphabetic tower in Batumi, Georgia (2013). He is leading and participating in research and technology transfer projects on bending-active lightweight footbridges (using GFRP and UHPFRC), optimisation of composite bridges, design of Hyperloop viaducts, and vibration mitigation in long-span bridges.

Matthys Levy. Matthys is author of Building Eden, a novel; Why the Wind Blows: a History of Weather and Global Warming and co-author of Why Buildings Fall Down; Structural Design in Architecture; Why the Earth Quakes, Earthquakes, Volcanoes & Tsunamis and Engineering the City. He was born in Switzerland and holds degrees from the City College of New York and Columbia University. He served in the US Army Corps of Engineers in Korea. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineers and the recipient of numerous awards and honours and holds patents on Triangulated Roof Structures. He is a lecturer on structures, building failures, the consequences of climate change and the use of a hands-on approach to teach youngsters about science and mathematics in the built environment. He has served as a forensic engineer for the collapse of the World Trade Towers as well as for various other cases. Levy was a founding principal of WAI, Consulting Engineers and served as structural design engineer for hundreds of building and bridge projects. Among them are numerous concrete shell and spatial structures such as La Concha in Puerto Rico; the Javits Convention Center in New York with its stepped space frame roof; the Georgia Dome in Atlanta and the La Plata Stadium in Argentina, which feature his cable and fabric patented Tenstar Dome as well as smaller shell and space frame roofs in other parts of the world. His most recent project is a 100m long triangulated canopy supported on three columns for the World War II Museum in New Orleans.

Massimo Maffeis. Massimo was born in a small town in Northern Italy. After his studies in Engineering at the University of Trento, he founded Maffeis Engineering in 2000. Now based in Solagna (province of Vicenza), Massimo manages and follows up on the structural design works undertaken by the Firm. His strong educational background complemented with an intuitive approach have enabled him to deal with many types of structures. He has specialized in the analysis and design of spatial and cable structures, buildings, airports’ long-span roofs, bridges. Massimo has gathered a wide technical experience in sports complexes and stadia, starting from the conceptual stage up to the final detailed design phase, as well as the follow-up on-site construction. Massimo’s built works also include retractable roofs and moving mechanical systems. The focus of his experience lies in spatial and tensile structures for which he developed in-house form-finding state-of-the-art procedures and software. He is also skilled in developing innovative erection and installation methodologies, particularly for long-span steel and façade structures. A further area of development is the parametric design approach, of which Massimo is a strong advocate. His commitment and passion contributed to the diffusion of innovative structures into the panorama of the contemporary construction industry.

Marijke Mollaert. Marijke started her professional activities in the Civil Engineering Department of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in 1978. A few years later she moved to the Architectural Engineering Department, where the focus lies in the synergy between architecture and engineering. Her PhD. thesis, The Computer Aided Design of Tension Compression Structures (VUB 1984), initiated a deep interest and expertise in Spatial Structures in general and Form-active Structures specifically. In 1993, Marijke was appointed as professor at the Architectural Engineering Department and has since then taught structural design and form-active structures. Over the years, she has focused on various research objectives: to better characterize the materials, to underline the need for inter-disciplinary design, to refine the methods of form finding and analysis, to assure good detailing, to document qualitative projects, to have an eye on the integration in the landscape and to consider the limitations with respect to the very thin skin and the temporary use. Recently, environmental performance was added as a research topic. When Marijke initiated the European-Commission-funded thematic network TensiNet in 2001, it was intended to build up a network representing multi-disciplinary industries, like weavers, coaters, producers, manufacturers, engineering and architecture offices, to be able to exchange the specific domain knowledge and to improve the overall quality of tensile surface structures. This work continues today within the TensiNet Association. Marijke is currently convener of CEN-TC250 Working Group 5 Membrane Structures. This working group developed the Technical Specifications for the design of Membrane Structures, in preparation of a specific Eurocode part.

Juan Gerardo Oliva Salinas. Juan Gerardo is an architect from UNAM and a Doktor-Ingenieur from the University of Stuttgart, Germany. Professor Frei Otto was one of the tutors of his doctoral dissertation, where he published in 1982 the geometrical properties of translation surfaces applied to the form-finding of grid shells. For the first time, he proved that four symmetric nodes are coplanar; therefore, each mesh constitutes a planar quadrilateral. Since 1996, he has been in charge of the Lightweight Structures Laboratory at the Faculty of Architecture of the UNAM. Some of his most distinctive projects in Mexico are the grid-shell for the Federal Electoral Tribunal, the tent construction for the historical building ‘Palacio de Minería’, and the tent construction for the Government Palace in Oaxaca, Mexico. He has been an invited Professor at different universities in Mexico and elsewhere: the Technical University of Aachen in Germany; the University of Mendoza in Argentina, the University of Loja in Ecuador; Istmo University in Guatemala, and Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul, Turkey. In 2007 he received the National University Award in Architecture and Design, and in 2009 Mexico City’s Government Engineering Award. In 2014 he was nominated as the Best Researcher in Anthropic Sciences at the University of Aguascalientes, Mexico. He is currently Vice President of the IASS, and President of the Structural Engineers World Congress-Group Mexico.

Mike Schlaich. The main activities of Mike in the field of structural and civil engineering are lightweight structures and solar energy production. He is following his credo not as ‘l’art pour l’art’. In teaching, research and with his projects at schlaich bergermann partners he rather strives for saving resources by minimized use of materials and for producing clean, economic and renewable energy to improve everyone’s quality of life while at the same time contributing to what in German is called ‘Baukultur’. To him, in order to be successful, the built environment should not only arrive at environmental friendliness and low energy consumption during construction and use but ultimately lead to more beauty. He is, therefore, also actively working with artists, like the American, Christo with whom he is presently collaborating on the wrapping of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The results of this thinking are numerous lightweight spacial structures all over the world with renowned architects, and a wide range of solar thermal power plants which help to counteract climate change. At the university, together with a strong team of doctoral students, he lays the scientific and research base for such endeavours. His work was honoured by the memberships in two German Academies.

Brian Smith. Brian Smith spent the majority of his career with Flint & Neill, becoming a Partner from 1977 until 1997, when he was appointed a Consultant to the firm up to the end of 2020. Throughout his time with the firm, Brian has been responsible for the design and assessment of a wide range of long span bridges, tall towers, masts, chimneys and shell and other spatial structures in countries throughout the world. Of particular interest was his first shell design in 1964 for two novel structures constructed with sprayed concrete – possibly its first use as a structural material. Several noted shell structures were designed by the firm including university buildings in Cambridge and Birmingham and, more widely known, the Bahai Temple in Delhi. In the field of bridges, he has been responsible for the assessment and/or design of strengthening of major bridges including the Severn suspension bridge, The Wye and Erskine cable stayed bridges, the Lantau Crossing bridges in Hong Kong and the Westgate Bridge in Melbourne. In the field of towers and masts, he led the firm’s teams for clients such as the BBC, ITA (now Arqiva), BT as well as Electricity Supply Boards. Brian has been extensively involved in British, European and international Codes and Standards on Masts and Towers and on Wind Loading.

Chris Williams. Chris joined Ted Happold’s group at Arup in 1972, and was part of Ian Liddell’s team working on Frei Otto’s Multihalle Mannheim. His work was mainly on the interpretation of structural model test results, and computer analysis using a program written by Tezcan and Ovunc running on a Univac1108 computer. When Ted Happold left Arup in 1976 to form Buro Happold and to become a professor at Bath University, Chris joined him at the University. In the late 1990s he worked with Buro Happold and Foster + Partners on the roof over the Great Court of the British Museum. His work was mainly on the definition of the roof geometry for which he wrote the software. He now works with PhD students in the Department of Architecture & Civil Engineering, Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden. He combines work on some exceptional projects with teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Yi Min (Mike) Xie. Mike Xie is currently an Australian Laureate Fellow and a Distinguished Professor at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, where he directs the Centre for Innovative Structures and Materials. His team pioneered the evolutionary structural optimisation (ESO) and bi-directional evolutionary structural optimisation (BESO) methods, which have been used by thousands of engineers and architects around the world to design novel structures including several landmark buildings. His research impact in the field of structural optimisation was recognised in 2017 by the AGM Michell Medal and the Clunies Ross Innovation Award. In 2019, he was recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List and appointed a Member of the Order of Australia. In 2020, he was awarded the Victoria Prize for Science and Innovation. Mike is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering. He is one of the most highly cited researchers in his field, with over 20,000 citations. He has collaborated with a wide range of local and international companies, including Arup and Boeing. In 2020, the topological optimisation software, Ameba, developed by Mike’s team, was recognised by Digital FUTURES World as ‘The Most Influential Digital Tool of the Year’.