MASTER THESIS

The question of structural morphology in our time is face from architect and engineer in an innovative way, the application of computational software helps to solve ever more complex problems. Engineer community of 50 years ago knew that the use of classic analysis method offered extremely limited tools for the study of mechanical behaviour and consequently it’s was necessary to add to mathematical analysis lot of years of experience. Empiricism play a key role in design, when you think to Gaudì, and his Sagrada Familia, or Musumeci who used incredible strategies (such as bubble blower) to control the form.
Following the path traced by the work of architect Arata Isozaki, and especially his collaboration with Mutsuro Sasaki in the project of railway station of Florence and the national convention centre in Qatar, I tried to use the same principles of topology optimization in a large scale project. The task was to enforce the Extended Evolutionary Structure Optimization (ESO) principles used on the projects mentioned above to design the airport of Fiumicino north, in Rome (Italy), order to do this I used a Grasshopper™, and therefore a Rhino plug-in called Millipede.
Millipede is a Grasshopper™ component focusing on the analysis and optimization of structures. At the core of this component is a library of very fast structural analysis algorithms for linear elastic systems. The library contains its own optimization algorithms based on topology optimization; the plug-in, developed by Sawapan (Kaijima Sawako and Michalatos Panagiotis) allows to process very interesting solutions to complex structural problems.
The result is an indefinite unique shape, a kind of cave that surrounds passengers from the entrance to the flight interface.