An interesting insight into the Watercube in Beijing, a building often overshadowed by the Bird's Nest Stadium, and some other unusual structures. It's an hour long, so if you're short on time I've included a brief summary below!
- Tensegrity Bridge, or the impression of.
Blending large and small cable-stayed structures to form overlaps and redundancy.
Changing the angle of the uprights by up 30°, as there is little loss in efficiency up to this point. (7:00 - 10:00)
- 'Smearing' structure into three dimensions.
Rather than individual trusses requiring structure top and bottom to make them stable, a blending of the units produces a sweeping structure. essentially the overall depth is the same, but the forces are spread in all directions, reducing the amount of material needed and creating a more efficient structure. (14:00 - 17:00)
- Combining the columns and cross bracing.
( 19:40 - 22:00 )
- Structural Concept for the Watercube
A regular structure based on the most efficient subdivision of 3d space (The Kelvin Problem) (34:00 - 38:00)
- Creating an Arbitrary Pattern from a regular structure.
"The best way to create an arbitrary pattern is to start with a regular pattern in dimension n+1 and then remove one dimension" Here this is done by taking an angled slice through a 3D pattern, to create a 2D patter.(39:20 - 40:20)
- ...that still allows elements to be repeated (55:50)
