Example 1: Construction Stage : Capital Gate -Abu Dhabi
STRUCTURE
From its foundations right through its pinnacle, Capital Gate is a unique building and among the most technically challenging engineering projects in the world.
Some key features stand out amongst others:
–It’s gravity-defying 18 degree lean, widely believed to be the most inclined in the world
–The continuous twist of its form which ensures that the tower looks different from every angle
–The unique nature of the floor plate, each floor is unique
The foundation contains an incredibly dense mesh of reinforced steel that sits above 490 piles, drilled 30 meters underground to accommodate gravitational, wind and seismic pressures.
The core of the building is a pre-cambered, ‘slanting’ core that pulls in the opposite direction to the lean. It straightens as the building grows, pulled into a vertical position by the change in the centre of gravity of the building as concrete was poured onto subsequent floors.
The floor plates up to the 12th level are stacked vertically over one another. Between levels 12th and 29th the floor plates stagger over each other, in relation to the lean and twist of the shell, by between 800 to 1400mm and then back to 900mm. Between the 29th storey and the top storey, the range is between 900 and 300mm in relation to the line of the façade.
Capital Gate’s shell comprises a super-strong exo-skeleton called the diagrid, that provides a clear, unobstructed floor plate, using much less steel than a conventional structural frame. Other high-profile buildings that use the diagrid technology include the Hearst Tower in New York City, the Swiss Re building (“the Gherkin”) in London and the CCTV headquarters tower in Beijing. The total weight of steel used in Capital Gate is estimated to be around 21,500 tons which compares favourably to the 50,000 tons estimated for the CCTV tower in Beijing and the 36,910 tons of steel used in Malaysia’s Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur.
Example 02: Conceptual : St. stephen’s cathedral,Vienna Austria by liu CHIEN SHENG.
New cathedral integrates the surrounding societal functions, such as religious, art, commercial activities, tourism and traffic system. The church is placed on the ground floor, theaters and department store on the upper floor of the basement, and metro station on the bottom of basement. All the layers are divided by glass floor, and thus, the activities in different level generate visual overlap by the transparence of glass floor. People can experience the new cathedral through variety of spaces. This design is more appropriate style for the cathedral which is required to have multiple functions in modern human life.
The second example shows us that there are endless possibilities when it comes to architecture using parametric design.