lesson 3: additive redundancy
A common measure of well-engineered architecture is efficiency. David Billington elegantly outlines efficiency in this sense as ‘the search for forms that use a minimum of materials consistent with sound performance and assured safety …’. Frei Otto’s theory of minimal structures is yet more expansive, ‘an attempt to achieve, through maximum efficiency of structure and materials, optimum utilization of the available construction energy’. The ice surface structures described here, even for someone with little or no construction skills or experience, are fast to construct, use cheap, readily at hand materials and are only a few millimetres thick. Despite no calculations having been made, they are highly efficient in their use of structure, materials and constructional energy. Yet their virtues are also their vulnerability. Even at sub-zero temperatures, they are susceptible to structural failure. Sublimation – the state-change process of ice becoming vapour without first becoming liquid – poses the same threats as ice melt. At such minimal thicknesses, even a small loss of ice quickly causes buckling and structural failure. Attempts to mitigate this by increasing Oculus’ thickness by spraying it with frigid water proved largely futile as despite air temperatures approaching -10ºC much of the water ran off before it could freeze.
Oculus, sublimation
Oculus, attempts to thicken the structure only proved to be abortive work
Oculus, structural collapse following ice loss
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on site review 43: architecture and t ime
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