Deployable Gridshells and their application as a Physical Form Finding Tool: Constructing an innovative life-size Strained Timber Gridshell

This paper presents and discusses the outcomes of a recent participatory workshop where timber gridshells were designed and constructed intuitively by architecture students using physical models. These timber gridshells, constructed from deployable timber lattice mats, are deformed to become structures observing double curving geometries. After weeks of public exhibition, they were taken down, collapsed and stored away for erection a few months later. The possibility of reusing this deployable mat to achieve different forms resonates with the quest for construction efficiency, ease and sustainability. This paper speculates and investigates this system of shell form-finding as a reusable form-finding tool, to induce understanding of shell action, from an architect’s point of view, informing future designers of their structural logic, ease of construction and sustainability.