J.Brütting's & I.Mirtsopoulos's talks at ETH Zürich

The Chair for Structural Design – Prof. Joseph Schwartz invites Ioannis Mirtsopoulos and Jan Brütting to present their research to ETHZ’s Institute of Technology in Architecture (ITA). The lunch talk will take place from 12:00 to 13:00h at the Open Space of the ITA Building, ETH Campus Hönggerberg.

The first talk by Jan Brütting will be a summary of his research on “Designing Structures through Reuse”.

Reusing structural elements reduces the environmental impacts of building structures because it avoids sourcing new material, it reduces waste and it requires little energy. Designing structures from reused elements is unlike conventional structural design because available stock element characteristics (e.g. section and length) are the design input.

Jan will present novel computational methods for the synthesis of reticular structures to address two scenarios: a) reuse of reclaimed elements from a given stock, and b) design of an element stock which is used as a kit of parts to build diverse structures.

For part a) the most recent theoretical findings and applications of the method are presented. This includes the design of spatial truss structures, frames for office buildings and the design of ‘hybrid’ systems made of reused as well as new elements. For scenario b) the design, robotic manufacturing and assembly of the SXL’s “1-to-3” pavilion is showcased. The pavilion was part of an international exhibition at the IASS conference, held in October 2019 in Barcelona.

The second talk by Ioannis Mirtsopoulos will be about his on-going research on “Grammar-based generation of structures”

Design is an ill-structured problem characterized by open-ended expectations, emerging constraints, non-quantifiable features, the absence of global optimality and contradicting solution paths. Designers tame this complexity through creative processes, such as design exploration.

To address the problematic of design exploration and/or design fixation, Ioannis’ research is framed around force-driven grammar rules, for generative, conceptual design of spatial trusses, in an interactive way. Their successive application within an algorithmic framework operates as a form-finding engine, capable of generating numerous design candidates in static equilibrium within a given domain.

Ioannis will showcase the exploratory power of rule-based design approach, whose inception and originality are assisted by graphic statics. Case studies of truss systems within convex and non-convex domains will be presented.