Innovative Structural Design

The optimisation of structural systems in terms of minimal weight as well as more recent developments in the field of adaptive structures will create new opportunities to minimise the use of natural resources even further.

Lightweight Structures: Lightweight structures fully integrate engineering and architecture. When structures must span larger distances, or be higher, deployable or mobile, reducing their self-weight becomes increasingly important. To achieve this, lightweight structures avoid bending moments and are structurally designed to develop internal axial forces (tension and compression). Three-dimensional natural shapes make the flow of forces visible and enrich the architecture.
Adaptive Structural Systems: A variety of design aspects influence building performance. These include, apart from structural loadings, architectural criteria, environmental impact and user behaviour. Most, if not all, of these aspects change over time. However, conventional buildings are not designed to adapt to contextual aspects and needs. Therefore, research focuses on instant adaptation of structures and building envelopes to facilitate adaptation to context and needs.

2. Re-use of materials, elements and structures:
In all industrial countries there is a huge amount of existing building stock. Even if there will be further need for new buildings, a good understanding of the potential to re-use existing buildings can also contribute to save natural resources.

Life Cycle Design of Structures: To achieve the high European and Dutch sustainability goals, existing and future building stock energy performance levels will need to improve drastically. Furthermore, to reduce CO2 impact, it is necessary to systematically evaluate buildings’ capacity for change and upgrade them. This requires an assessment methodology to implement an improved Service Life. This methodology must incorporate statistical survival analysis methods as well as rating methodologies for technical flexibility indicator.

3. Renewable materials:
Another possibility is to replace traditional (mainly cement-based) materials with renewable bio-based materials, or even use completely ephemeral materials, such as ice, for temporary buildings.

Bio-based materials: Obviously natural, bio-based materials such as timber and bamboo have been used throughout these times, but nowadays other materials, which are not necessarily new themselves, but their application for building products are new, came up. Examples are hemp and flex fibres, Mycelium or lignin-based fibres for composite materials. In addition to fibre a resin is required to create composite materials and structures and various bio-based sources exist, such as linseed oil, furans or cashew nut shells, although the commercial development of these materials is not very far yet.

Structural ice: Furthermore, water, respectively ice, are being studied as a possible construction material. In certain areas, supply is practically endless, although its application for buildings is obviously limited to regions with very specific climate conditions. By reinforcing ice, it becomes stronger but also more ductile. A new application based on the unique deformation properties of reinforced ice is the use of flexible mouldings of ice.