Libra Workshop at eCAADe 2022
© 2022 EPFL
On Septembre 16th, Ioannis Mirtsopoulos (Structural Xploration Lab), will host a workshop on Libra, a soon-to-be-released plugin for Rhino+Grasshopper that allows free exporation of topological configurations. The workshop is part of the eCAADe conference 2022, the 40th Education and research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe (eCAADe) Conference, held this year at the KULeuven, Belgium.
More info on the workshop: https://kuleuven.ecaade2022.be/workshops/
This workshop focuses on a grammar for structural design, which has been developed during the doctoral studies of the instructor. As an outcome of his work, a computational framework that integrates the developed theory into a fully functioning Grasshopper plug-in has been implemented, named Libra. The tool allows the incremental generation of numerous diverse reticulated conceptual structures in a semi-automated way within predefined design domains and for predefined loads without any knowledge of structural mechanics. Particularly, it provides an easy and intuitive workflow for structural design, beneficial to understand how the flow of forces affects the design of structures. The integration of static equilibrium conditions ensures designers that the generated design candidates are always in static equilibrium and no further post-processing to impose equilibrium is required. This design workflow aims at provoking creativity. Additionally, it deals with structural design and structural performance, which can optionally be optimized if the designer/user wishes so. Overall, it is a generative, algorithmic & evolutionary design approach that integrates interactive genetic algorithms and aims to unveil unprecedented structural forms. Multiple eCAADe themes tackle with creativity, structural design, and generative/evolutionary design and therefore the eCAADe community perfectly matches the target group of the developed plug-in. In particular, the workshop targets architects with interest in conceptual structural design and grammar rules. During the workshop the theory of the generative grammars that support the workflow will be provided. After, the participants will be guided for the generation of 2D and 3D structurally valid design candidates.