An Insight Into the Design Process of Unconventional Structures

This thesis studies the design process of unconventional structures starting with the hypotheses that it is different from and more difficult than that of conventional structures.

Nine unconventional structures provide case studies for the exploration of the design process. Interviews were carried out with architects and engineers who participated in the design of each case study. The interviews form a historical record of the views of leading designers, some of whom have dominated the field over the last thirty years.

The interviews show that difficulties lie in the nature of tasks and timing of the intervention of each discipline, in the specific knowledge of technical issues, in the degree of experience of individuals in the field of unconventional structures, in the different degree of familiarity that individuals have with means of communication and simulation and in the new architectural language of forms.

These conclusions were tested against further research based on a study of the literature describing three further case studies and interviews with four leading designers. The outcome of this work confirmed that the design process of conventional and unconventional structures is an intuitive, cyclic problem-solving task which involves the modification of preconceived models in order to arrive at a solution. This process functions and follows the same pattern of iteration and testing of ideas by error elimination irrespective of the conventional or unconventional nature of the outcome.

Thus the design process of conventional and unconventional structures is essentially the same, refuting the first hypothesis, but the design of unconventional structures involves a greater number of iterations to eradicate difficulties. In architecture tests are largely qualitative. In engineering they are more quantitative and when designing an unconventional structure it is necessary to invent not only the solution but also the test.