Exoskeletons

  • Prize
    Winner in Landscape Architecture - Conceptual Landscape
  • University
    Bartlett School of Architecture. UCL
  • Lead Designer
    Cheng-Wei Lee

This experimental project investigates the the structure and morphological principles of arthropods’ exoskeletons as a source of exploration for new construction compounds in landscape architecture.

Exoskeletons is a lightweight structure that fuses advancements in additive manufacturing with bio-inspired computational design. These internal geometry form the structure, which varies in density and orientation according to a homeostatic load-responsive process, which makes them adapt to local strain levels within a structure.

A custom algorithmic workflow was developed to mimic this load-responsive method for designing gridshell structures, which are locally optimised in topology, orien-tation, and section to maximise material efficiency.

The structural are arranged following principal stress lines and change their thickness and topology following a topology optimization map. A sequence of topology optimisation process iterations. This is based on loads and structure constraint inputs for the analysis. A distributed load of was applied over the anticlastic shell, and fixed supports were assumed on the two edges lying on the ground.