Onouye Studio | John Ochsendorf | 2017
Description
The 2016-2017 Onouye Studio welcomed John Ochsendorf (MIT), and focused on shell structures. As materially-efficient structures enclosing and defining architectural space, shells have passed in and out of favor throughout history, in different material manifestations. Bringing the issues of shell construction into the present day, this studio proposed timber – natural wood and engineered wood products – as a potential next phase of shell construction. As a renewable, carbon-friendly material, timber is finding renewed appreciation as a structural material with many potential uses. Shell construction remains one of the most material efficient, structurally-performative means to enclose large volumes. With small material costs, the challenge of building shells becomes the precise shaping of the shell into a structurally and architecturally appropriate form, and the organization of a cost-effective construction method. With twelve graduate architecture students, we explored timber shells as hybrid products of architectural and structural form.
Divided into three groups, each group showcased a different potential future for timber shell structures through the construction of scale prototypes for structural evaluation and public display: a folded plate, a hyperboloid tower, and a bent-wood gridshell.
Chair Bio
John Ochsendorf is a structural engineer with multi-disciplinary research interests including the history of construction, masonry mechanics, and sustainable design. Trained in structural mechanics at Cornell, Princeton, and the University of Cambridge, he conducts research on the structural safety of historic monuments and the design of more sustainable infrastructure. An expert on the mechanics and behavior of masonry structures, Ochsendorf collaborates with art historians, architects, and engineers on the study and structural assessment of historic monuments around the world. His group’s work on equilibrium methods has been extended to include early stage structural design tools for architects and engineers.
Ochsendorf is the author of “Guastavino Vaulting: The Art of Structural Tile” (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010) and several dozen journal papers in structural mechanics. He has been awarded a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome and a MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Chair Lecture
UW Instructor
Tyler Sprague, University of Washington
Industry Support
Jay Taylor, Magnusson Klemencic Associates
- Marne Zahner, Magnusson Klemencic Associates
Derek Ratzlaff, Fast + Epp
Students
Stefanie Barrera
Michael S. Ennen
Matthew E Frantz
Hanz Alan Greyerbiehl
Jayeong Koo
Anqi Liang
Rachel Meyers
Teresa Fotini Moroseos
William C Nicholson
Mardochee Thelusma
Ian Macleod
