Construction has always been a fascinating and challenging aspect of elastic gridshells, which are generally assembled flat, and then elastically bent/erected. In the past decades, three different techniques have successfully been used for the erection of these structures. This thesis was inspired by the work of Frei Otto and Dante Bini and proposes an alternative erection method, which is based on the use of a pneumatic falsework and a digital monitoring system. The result is a full-scale form-finding/erection method, which bridges design and construction aspects of elastic gridshells through numerical simulations and prototyping.

PhD thesis by Alessandro Liuti.

Refer to the ASA 2015 Conference Proceedings, the ICSA 2016 Conference Proceedings, the Proceedings of the IASS Symposium 2017 and this YouTube video for further information.