Our first prototype made from wood clearly showed us that active bending with only one element is hard to do.

So we combined the first element with a second element, where both are bended true interlocking with each other providing stress with the structure. The elements interlock in four points providing five distances we could play with.

In Karamba we compared three different sections to find witch positions are optimal for a structural stair.

From the numbers generated by the software it was clear that the first section performed better than the others.

Making the model using the section positions showed us that in fact the structure was performing better. However there was still something missing.

Using galapagos we tried to find the further best geometry but the result was unsuccessful, so we come back to the first result.

After the beam analysis we found the better geometry for the row support, in order to reduce the My.

Connecting the sides of the steps with rope provided the missing overall stability of the system.

Conclusion: Going back and forth from physical model to digital model showed us the benefits of using both instead of just one for the optimization of a structure. Combining the strong sides of both methods is the wright way.

The components are connected in order to create a module, the modules aggregation create 
the structure.

The resulted structure create curved surfaces in both x and y directions.

The curved surfaces create arches, but the force distributions is different from an arch, 
the curved joints distribute the force to the central nodes in both directions, x and y.
The nodes become the most stressed elements of the structure.

PROTOTYPE 2

The second prototype is composed by two components, basically the same, one is straight, 
other one is bended.

The components aggregation create a linear structure, below is showed the first assemble combination.

The second components combination create a denser structure in order to reach an higher behavior.