Habitable tensegrities: An alternative approach to earthquake-resilient buildings

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to find architectural implementations for tensegrity within earthquake-resilient buildings and to explore which opportunities, challenges, and design implications arise from harnessing this seldom utilized structural principle. Earthquakes are responsible for a majority of deaths caused by natural disasters according to WHO (n.d.). They state that 125 million people were affected by earthquakes globally during a 19-year timespan, and list building design and materials as one of six factors that determine how severe the impact is. This implies an enormous potential benefit for buildings that are better able to withstand this phenomenon. In a nutshell, a tensegrity system is a set of otherwise unstable compressive components connected to each other and made stable by a set of tensile components. Tensegrity as a structural principle offers flexibility and elasticity whilst being lightweight. While this work is based on an established theoretical framework the main focus has been experimentation and exploration regarding how to apply the pre-existing knowledge. Much of this investigative process has been carried out through iterative digital physics simulations, backed by further verification in the form of physical scale models. The findings from the explorations are integrated into a general concept for an earthquake-resilient building to highlight the practical applications for tensegrity as well as to provide a basis for discussion regarding architectural ramifications of design choices and structural logic. In order to best make the case for the viability of tensegrity for any type of building it will be applied to a residential building, arguably the most ubiquitous type. This design is not location-specific and instead explores the concept in a general sense.