Innovative spatial timber structures: workshops with physical modeling explorations from small to full scale

Architects and Engineers are educated and work within two separate cultures yet they are both concerned with conceptual structural design. The collaboration between the professions is especially important when designing buildings where the structure to a great degree forms the spaces, as in the cases of form generating structures such as gridshells, reciprocal frames, space trusses etc . This paper describes several specialist research based workshops developed at KA over the last two years that use physical modelling of 1:1 innovative timber load-bearing structures such as gridshells and reciprocal frames.