Combinatorial Equilibrium Modelling - Designing with Force Patterns

The research follows the overall objective to free designers from early determinations and typologies and provide new perspectives to the discussion on the interaction between structural behaviour, architectural design and the use of computational models in the conceptual design phase. A novel material and scale-independent structural design approach will be developed that allows to intuitively negotiate different spatial and structural configurations in the conceptual design phase. For achieving this, a theoretical framework will be worked out that is based on a particular design theory, graphic statics and the graph theory. The framework is going to deal with the spatial potential of a multiplicity of radically different structural behaviours within the same design space that is enabled by the Lower Bound Theorem of the Theory of Plasticity.
The potential of this research is to open up, replicable and synthetic ways to manipulate the formal and the structural behaviour in the early conceptual design phase in an interactive way. For the illustration of this potential, a digital tool will be originated that is based on the developed theoretical framework and tested in different design scenarios and contexts. Additionally the results of it, will inform materialization processes in which different aspects of structural design are confronted with each other and then contextualized in the structural design discourse.