The Secondary Structure and Its Impact on the Architectural Formation of Building Envelope
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Abstract
The advances in computer technologies have caused new architectural formations in contemporary buildings. They were characterized by free forms with diverse formal relationships that appear at different levels within the building, especially the surface formation level and the mass formation level. Also, the methods of embodiment of these formations and their mechanisms varied. Difficulties in distinguishing these new formations within the main structure have led to the need to find new structural solutions that embody these formations. In contemporary architecture, the relationship between the main and the secondary structure is defined by a hierarchy of the load-bearing roles. The research problem arises from the absence of clarification of the secondary structural role in embodying these formations. The research assumes that the secondary structural systems play an active role in embodying the architectural formations of the building envelope. Therefore, this study aims to uncover the potentialities of the secondary structures in the process of embodying the architectural formations, according to mechanisms of form generation. The research relies on the analytical approach to extract the indicators of the theoretical framework and then adopts the comparative analytical approach for five selected case studies of contemporary buildings and shows a variety in their use of secondary structure. The study finds that the secondary structure acts as a flexible structural medium, allowing it to produce complex forms according to the diversity in the mechanisms, depending on the methods of architectural formation. Therefore, the surface and mass formations transform from a static to a dynamic state.
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