Structural thoughts and existing/past structures

Wanted to put down my thoughts for things to think about with the structure and then a mix of structures that hopefully will get people thinking.

::Structure::
The two basic (and obvious) things to consider are 1. member type (and probably more importantly internal forces) and 2. external loads.

1. When designing, consider arches (compression and bending), trusses (tension and compression), planes (tension, compression, bending, shear, i.e. shear walls ), hanging (tension, i.e. inverted arch). Think about how these forces balance each other globally and what bottle-bottle connections are needed to transfer the loads within the member.

2. It'll be nearly impossible to figure out live loads (rain, wind and forces from fluid flow) and dead loads for the structure before hand. Luckily (or unfortunately), it's fairly likely that the critical demands on the structure aren't these, but the far less predictable loads imparted by people. We won't (can't) design to totally prevent people from damaging the structure, but it could be a benchmark to shoot for or at least something to keep in mind.

::Design::
One structure that I keep thinking of is the Floralis Generica (sorry it's not in English, but they're good pictures) in Buenos Aires. During the day, it remains open, but at night it closes, powered by a solar cell "pistol." This feature bring ups the question: would we want our structure to be a dynamic structure like the Floralis and if so whether it would be passively or actively powered?



Another is the Schubert Club Band Shell in St. Paul. OK, so this doesn't resemble a flower at all, but it's an interesting model for a simple shelter that's pretty structurally neat. It could be one component of the final design perhaps.

The next is a past project I did along the lines of EPRF. The materials were restricted and designated for uses not immediately obvious, it was to built in a public space and it was meant to be a free-form/absurdist study in construction and materials. It was an apple structure. The biggest lessons here were that people are far more destructive than nature and that testing and quality control are actually important. Something that would have helped, and seems like we're going to do, is get a lot of community involvement. This would be the best protection for the final product.

At the Evanston Art Center there was an meta-installation last year with bottles. You can read about it here. They made the community a large part of the project as well and did interesting things with lighting.

::Misc.::
So this isn't a structure, but just an idea: So, you know those spiral wishing wells? Or that Bill Nye trick where you make spin a bottle to make a vortex to make the water flow out faster? We could set up rain flow so that it forms a vortex and filters faster and makes the process a little more exciting. But this has to be balanced with the fact that quickly moving water could exert large dynamic lateral forces on the structure, where as semi-static loads of slowly flowing water are easier to deal with.

Lastly, I heard people talking about how heavy water is. So, just in case anyone's interested: unit weight of water is 62.4 lb/cu. ft. (pcf), for regular loose top soil it's about 90pcf, for sand it's about 110pcf, for most other soils it's 120pcf and for concrete it's about 150pcf. (Yeah, engineers can't help but hold onto random values like this...)


And here are some sketches they'll hopefully spark more thought...
















-AS