FORM ACTIVE STRUCTURES involves the integration of bioplastics onto tensile fabrics to create a material system which is geometrically responsive to build self-deployable, lightweight, low-cost and easily transportable structures.

The bioplastic acts as a stiffening agent for the pre-tensioned fabric, enabling the programming of the material system to have a specific 3D form. The computational exploration for this project has been divided into two parts. The first part is a pure geometrical exploration to determine the final three-dimensional form of the structure. Scalability of the material system is an extremely crucial aspect of the project and therefore, the second part of the exploration deals with optimizing the cross-sectional area of the bioplastic in relation with the area of the fabric, the area within the structure and the headroom to minimise bending moments, shear forces and displacement of the structure, maximising the structural stability.

Artificial Evolutionary Design – Form Active Structures is a project of IaaC, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia developed at MAA01 in 2017-18 by:

Student: Bhakti Loonawat, Ipsita Datta
Faculty: Aldo Sollazzo, Rodrigo Aguirre