Adaptive Structures

Despite huge technological advancements all around, the way everyday structures are designed has not changed fundamentally for over 100 years; design a structure to be strong, and then check to make sure it does not move around too much. Why should the built environment industry not rethink this basic assumption?

Unlike conventional structures, adaptive structures change their shape to prevent excessive movement caused by loads, allowing for super-slender structures that look great and use much less material and less whole-life energy (made by an embodied part in the material mass for extraction and manufacturing and an operational part for structural adaptation during the lifetime of the structure).

This exhibition invites you to test this new engineering philosophy with an interactive, 6m long cantilevered steel space truss structure, a scaled version for the super structure of a tall tower subjected to wind load. This structure is as slender and lightweight as the material would allow with strain gauges sensing loads and actuators actively controlling movement, in real-time. If you walk to the end of the 6m gang plank, the cantilever structure senses you and stays completely flat.