140 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in PedagogyLightweight structures: a unique design paradigm
Design of lightweight structures has traditionally been a field of experimentation.
Both in practice and education, designing and teaching lightweight structures have
been closely related with innovative investigations [Fig. 1]. Projects carried out by
professional practices, research groups and educational units have gone one step ahead
of their times, resulting in a set of works of the highest standards within the gamut
of 20th century architecture (from F. Candela to F. Otto, B. Fuller to Diller+Scofidio,
C.and R. Eames to R. Piano, N. Grimshaw or Future Systems). The results of their work
have been usually documented in eminent relative literature (such as IL series) and
celebrated in Exhibitions and World Fairs.
Likewise, the notion of experimentation has been for long associated with the
term of lightweight structures, every experimental structure being considered a light-
weight one.
But what actually constitutes a lightweight structure?
The term lightweight structures has been associated with modular systems with articu-
lated parts, deployable or demountable structures and ephemeral/ reversible archi-
tecture, therefore immediately linked to specific architectural typologies. And then,
deprived from the context and design parameters, the term lightweight structures
has been used to describe certain typologies instead of structures produced with a
certain design and making process.
According to B.Fuller’s classical question, ‘Do you know how much your building
weighs?’, the consideration of lightness in building construction should be of primary
importance in every architectural design. In this sense, every architectural structure
could be considered as a lightweight one, the issue of weight being one of the main
concerns that every building design scheme has to deal with. Moving from the notion
of the absolute weight to this of relative weight and then towards the concept of the
optimum weight, finally the question comes down to the minimum weight to loading
capacity ratio, therefore associating the notion of a lightweight structure with that
of a structurally efficient one. Immediately issues of structure, materials, technolo-
gies and processes arise.
Taken aside the issue of weight, the obvious synergy of all these parameters in the
design and making process of lightweight structures is a unique paradigm of special
interest and this is what makes lightweight structures so modern again today.
And while in architecture the complex character of lightweight structures is yet
to (re)discover, in engineering fields the concept of lightness is more composite and
recalls its initial characteristics related to forms as well as materials and processes.
In ‘Lightness - The inevitable renaissance of minimum energy structures’ , aero-
space engineer A. Beukers points out^1 : “[The book’s most important angle] is the
trinity of material, shape and process, since the balance between them becomes more
delicate, proportional to the lightness required for the resulting structure. Making
things lighter is not just a matter of choosing lighter materials, for every material
entails its own properties in terms of shape and manufacturing techniques.”