Building Construction 2: Project 2: Understanding Forces in Building Construction

Savill Building

A significant grid shell building, we had chosen this building as for our case study about grid shell construction. 

The roof of this Savill Building itself is made up of grid structure with minimum support from the inclined column. The grid shell is carefully shaped with equally high at highest point and lowest point, so that the forces and loads are being transfer an distribute evenly throughout the whole grid structure to the column, make no point with extra loads or forces. It is constantly at compression and tension stresses because of it positive and negative curvature of the structure. 

The strength is all coming from the carefully shaped structure and the materials itself. Wooden, with high strength accept both tension and compression stresses matches perfectly with the design. The wall has nothing to do with the support of the roof structure although they are attached, it just sit on it and seal to give weather resistant.  

Grid shell can be very strong and self sustain if design with extra care, that's the hardest part of the structure. In order to achieve it, precision and accuracy are very important. But it really worth because grid shell can consider as strong structure with can compare with concrete built structure.