This Pavilion design is the result of research into grid-stiffened shells. Grid-stiffened shells (a.k.a. gridshells), prevalent in 1950s-60s engineering masterworks by Nervi, Otto, Fuller and Candela, were part of a lineage of experimentation into material intelligence and analogue shape computation leading all the way back to the Gothic era. The elegance of these structures is a function of their controlled curvature which is generated using form-finding techniques as well as their patterned relief which reduces weight and while increasing stiffness. These solutions, while efficient and elegant, were often limited by the modern paradigm and its tendencies toward formal purism on the one hand and structural expressionism on the other.

In the contemporary digital environment, the grid-stiffened shell is newly relevant. Our re-examination of the grid-stiffened shell accepts the material sensibility of this earlier work while questioning its monotonous pattern geometry and tendency toward universal forms. This proposal for the Novosibirsk Pavilion is based on the simultaneous response of pattern to surface curvature and force pathways, generating a highly varied and informed structuration. Variability in pattern morphology, density, and depth allow for a localized structural tuning which would be impossible with an invariant pattern logic. Ultimately, limitations of traditional form-finding, where structures tend toward funicular forms, are lifted, and more complex surface shapes begin to be possible. Form-finding, no longer a determinant of global geometry, becomes a technique for optimizing regions of geometry in a larger structural ecology.

The pattern logic of the stiffeners was critical for the spatial sensibility of this project and it was painstakingly developed as a hybrid of several shape grammars and computational techniques. A base subdivision of the surfaces was achieved based on curvature where pinched or twisted regions of the surfaces were broken down into smaller and smaller quadrilateral cells. A routine for transforming this subdivision into a branching logic was developed in order to generate a more complex and robust network of structural pathways, one which could be easily re-adjusted based on engineering information. Long beam-like regions of stiffeners began to emerge with less dense infill areas interconnecting them, together creating what we now refer to as beam-branes. Beam-branes, first explored in Dragonfly, are smooth but highly varied structures which transform from beam to membrane and back again in response to local stress conditions.