Contemporary architecture has witnessed a new innovative trend in design characterized by the creation of interesting free-flowing structures that reflect expressiveness of form and design, as well as the uniqueness of structure and approaches of construction. These fascinating structures are often perceived as landmarks that blend harmoniously into their surroundings. In the last two decades, parametric design and advanced computational tools, with prefabrication and construction techniques, enabled architects and engineers to explore new materials and methods to create such impressive structures, breaking the obsolete ways of thinking. Several examples of free-form structures lack obviously to explore architectural potentialities, that enrich the intention of architect, are still unformulated. The main objective of the present paper includes a conceptual proposal exploring the architectural potentiality of the free-form structures, focusing on form-finding possibilities through optimizing both the geometry and the mass of the structure, to generate configurations that ensure self-supported forms with stable force equilibrium. The paper introduces two simplified analytical methods to achieve the efficiency of the free-form architectural structures: the first depends on using extra materials to strengthen surfaces (such as grid shell system), and the second includes changing the geometry to achieve high “strength-to-weight” ratio (such as folding or conical self supports). By applying these methods, it is possible to explore various form-finding possibilities that contribute to the generation of characteristic landmarks with impressive structures.
Shell-supported footbridges
