*** Featuring a foreword by Pritzker Prize Winner Shigeru Ban *** Bringing together experts from research and practice, Shell Structures for Architecture: Form Finding and Optimization presents contemporary design methods for shell and gridshell structures, covering form-finding and structural optimization techniques. It introduces architecture and engineering practitioners and students to structural shells and provides computational techniques to develop complex curved structural surfaces, in the form of mathematics, computer algorithms, and design case studies. • Part I introduces the topic of shells, tracing the ancient relationship between structural form and forces, the basics of shell behaviour, and the evolution of form-finding and structural optimization techniques. • Part II familiarizes the reader with form-finding techniques to explore expressive structural geometries, covering the force density method, thrust network analysis, dynamic relaxation and particle-spring systems. • Part III focuses on shell shape and topology optimization, and provides a deeper understanding of gradient-based methods and meta-heuristic techniques. • Part IV contains precedent studies of realised shells and gridshells describing their innovative design and construction methods.

*** Featuring a foreword by Pritzker Prize Winner Shigeru Ban *** Bringing together experts from research and practice, Shell Structures for Architecture: Form Finding and Optimization presents contemporary design methods for shell and gridshell structures, covering form-finding and structural optimization techniques. It introduces architecture and engineering practitioners and students to structural shells and provides computational techniques to develop complex curved structural surfaces, in the form of mathematics, computer algorithms, and design case studies. • Part I introduces the topic of shells, tracing the ancient relationship between structural form and forces, the basics of shell behaviour, and the evolution of form-finding and structural optimization techniques. • Part II familiarizes the reader with form-finding techniques to explore expressive structural geometries, covering the force density method, thrust network analysis, dynamic relaxation and particle-spring systems. • Part III focuses on shell shape and topology optimization, and provides a deeper understanding of gradient-based methods and meta-heuristic techniques. • Part IV contains precedent studies of realised shells and gridshells describing their innovative design and construction methods.

Shell structures are widely used in the fields of civil, mechanical, architectural, aeronautical, and marine engineering. Shell technology has been enhanced by the development of new materials and prefabrication schemes. Despite the mechanical advantages and aesthetic value offered by shell structures, many engineers and architects are relatively unacquinted with shell behaviour and design. This book familiarizes the engineering and architectural student, as well as the practicing engineer and architect, with the behaviour and design aspects of shell structures. Three aspects are presented: the Physical behaviour, the structural analysis, and the design of shells in a simple, integrated, and yet concise fashion. Thus, the book contains three major aspects of shell engineering: (1) physical understanding of shell behaviour; (2) use of applied shell theories; and (3) development of design methodologies together with shell design examples. The theoretical tools required for rational analysis of shells are kept at a modest level to give a sound grasp of the fundamentals of shell behaviour and, at the same time, an understanding of the related theory, allowing it to be applied to actual design problems. To achieve a physical understanding of complex shell behaviour, quantitative presentations are supplemented by qualitative discussions so that the reader can grasp the `physical feeling' of shell behaviour. A number of analysis and detailed design examples are also worked out in various chapters, making the book a useful reference manual. This book can be used as a textbook and/or a reference book in undergraduate as well as graduate university courses in the fields of civil, mechanical, architectural, aeronautical, and materials engineering. It can also be used as a reference and design-analysis manual for the practicing engineers and architects. The text is supplemented by a number of appendices containing tables of shell analysis and design charts and tables.

This book describes the design, detailing and structural engineering of filigree, double-curved and long-span glazed shells of minimal weight and ingenious details. Innovative, clear and understandable geometric principles for the design of double-curved shell structures are explained in a practical manner. The principles are simple to apply with the use of functions now available in most CAD programs. The author demonstrates how floating and homogeneous structures can be created on these "free" forms, particularly grid shells of planar rectangles. These are especially suitable for glazing with flat panes and offer structural, economical and architectural advantages. Examples are provided to illustrate in simple ways the latest methods of form finding calculation and holistic optimisation through the complex interaction of structure, form and topology. Numerous examples built all over the world from 1989 to 2014 offer orientation and assistance in the design of such double-curved shells. Essential design parameters, many details and node connections of constructed projects are presented and evaluated. These structures have been built all over the world in close partnership with renowned architects.

The East German engineer Ulrich Muther contributed an important chapter to the European history of shell construction. In 1963 he created the first concrete shell as the realisation of his diploma project in the former GDR. His career of the more than 30 years saw many milestones. Ulrich Muther realised his pioneering shell constructions in his homeland on the island of Rugen, in and around Rostock and in other parts of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. This book alternates between a classical architecture guide and an almost archaeological inventory. It furnishes a well founded insight into the euphoric belief in progress that attended the building boom of the sixties and seventies. All the relevant objects in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania have been assembled in one publication for the first time. The buildings are portrayed with the aid of current photographs, plans, texts and project information. Survey maps and addresses facilitate on-site visits.

The first monograph to celebrate the architectural legacy of the Guastavino family is now available in paperback. First-generation Spanish immigrants Rafael Guastavino and his son Rafael Jr. oversaw the construction of thousands of spectacular tile vaults across the United States between the 1880s and the 1950s. These versatile, strong, and fireproof vaults were built by Guastavino in more than two hundred major buildings in Manhattan and in hundreds more across the country, including Grand Central Terminal, Carnegie Hall, the Biltmore Estate, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the Registry Room at Ellis Island, and many major university buildings. Guastavino Vaulting blends a scholarly history of the technology with archival images, drawings, and stunning photographs that illustrate the variety and endurance of this building method.

This title looks at the work of Heinz Isler. Working for over 40 years with free form shell structures, primarily constructed from reinforced concrete, Isler has built well over 1000 shells. His work contributes to contemporary architecture by its inspirational qualities.

Beaufort, South Carolina, is well known for its historical architecture, but perhaps none is quite as remarkable as those edifices formed by tabby, sometimes called coastal concrete, comprising a mixture of lime, sand, water, and oyster shells. Tabby itself has a storied history stretching back to Iberian, Caribbean, Spanish American, and even African roots—brought to the United States by adventurers, merchants, military engineers, planters, and the enslaved. Tabby has been preserved most abundantly in the Beaufort area and its outlying islands, (and along the Sea Islands all the way to Florida as well) with Fort Frederick in 1734 having the earliest example of a diverse group of structures, which included town houses, seawalls, planters' homes, barns, agricultural buildings, and slave quarters. Tabby's insulating properties are excellent protection from long, hot, humid, and sometimes deadly summers; and on the islands, particularly, wealthy plantation owners built grand houses for themselves and improved dwellings for enslaved workers that after two hundred-plus years still stand today. An extraordinarily hardy material, tabby has a history akin to some of the world's oldest building techniques and is referred to as "rammed earth," as well as " tapia" in Spanish, "pisé de terre" in French, and "hangtu" in Chinese. The form that tabby construction took along the Sea Islands, however, was born of necessity. Here stone and brick were rare and expensive, but the oyster shells that were used as the source for the tabby's lime base were plentiful. Today these bits of shell, often visible in the walls and forms constructed long ago, give tabby its unique and iconic appearance. Colin Brooker, architect and expert on historic restoration, has not only made an exhaustive foray into local tabby architecture and heritage; he also has made a multinational tour as well in search of tabby origins, evolution, and diffusion from the Bahamas to Morocco to Andalusia, which can be traced back as far as the tenth century. Brooker has spent more than thirty years investigating the origins of tabby, its chemistry, its engineering, and its limitations. The Shell Builders lays out a sweeping, in-depth, and fascinating investigative journey—at once archaeological, sociological, and historical—into the ways prior inhabitants used and shaped their environment in order to house and protect themselves, leaving behind an architectural legacy that is both mysterious and beautiful. Lawrence S. Rowland, a distinguished professor emeritus of history at the University of South Carolina Beaufort and past president of the South Carolina Historical Society, provides a foreword.

This new edition is completely updated and rewritten, covers an expanded range of topics, and includes many worked-out examples inspired by built projects. The approach throughout is to present structures as a fundamental basis for architecture. --Book Jacket.

Concrete shell construction started to become popular in the mid-20th century. Technically advanced designs with conspicuous expressiveness began to appear all over the world. With three typical protagonists - Félix Candela (1910-1997), Heinz Isler (1926-2009), and Ulrich Müther (1934-2007) - the book examines this construction method. Their work - primarily in Mexico, Switzerland, and the former GDR - was carried out under very different political, economic, social, and cultural conditions. The authors analyze the buildings and projects against the background of developments in architecture and engineering at that time. The focus is on mutual influence, shared aspects and differences in the design processes, the structural design, and the execution. In addition, the book examines how the work was received and today's application of the building method.