SEAoNY April Seminar: Understanding the Old to Design the New

Understanding the Old to Design the New: Revisiting Traditional Construction to Inspire Light-Weight and Sustainable Structural Design.

Historic construction techniques can yield inspiration for novel structural design, yet engineers are rarely taught about the constructive systems, materials or analysis methods that were commonplace before WWII. This presentation will examine the value of revisiting traditional construction methods and demonstrate that they can be bolstered by state-of-the art digital tools to produce innovative designs.

With the advancement of digital fabrication and parametric modeling, some of the challenges that caused traditional construction techniques to fall out of fashion can be eliminated. Furthermore, now is a particularly crucial time to re-evaluate the merit of some of these historic techniques, as many offer building solutions that are far more environmentally sustainable than the methods that came to replace them.

In particular, this talk will explore the potential modern applications of earthen construction, continuous shell structures made from concrete or thin-tile “Guastavino” vaulting, as well as bamboo gridshells.

A series of historic preservation and new structural design projects ranging from the seismic retrofitting of a 17th century earthen church in Peru, to the development of design methods for new shell structures under earthquake loading will also be presented. The talk will conclude by showing a selection of light-weight structures that are currently being designed or constructed (some in the New York area) which draw inspiration from historic buildings.

Price: $25 – SEAoNY Member | $40 – Non-Member | $5 – Student

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As a reminder, AIA National policy requires participants to attend the entire educational portion of an event to receive continuing education credits. We encourage all participants to arrive on time to comply with this policy.