'International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures'
Abstract
Herein we introduce an academic approach to teach students spatial structure from a sustainable perspective to give them tools to generate appropriate technology in the building environment. The students explore sustainable and structural properties of construction materials and systems. The base approach for sustainability rely on the biomimetic principles. They use reciprocal frame structures, without any tool and with local materials, to build structural systems for canopies and bridges. These structures give significance to a high performance structural system made of tree branches or other local materials that are built for temporal or permanent use, in small or big scales, with minimum impact to its surroundings. They give special emphasis to generating a reciprocal frame culture in which there is the need to change pragmatical approaches to develop a structure from geometric and material perspective. First, the students break their own schemes when they realized that they do not have control of the final product and cannot reproduce a “simple” concept as fast as they wanted. When they succeed to generate one task, the instructor encourage them to propose another form and teach others, not architects or civil engineer students, to follow their instructions. Finally, they must realize the need to explore different communication ways to transmit the concept of reciprocal frame to a non-builder person
