FREE-FORM SHELL STRUCTURES AS ART OBJECTS IN THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT

Abstract

City environment is a complicated system, where individual buildings interact with streets, squares, public spaces. The comfort of the urban environment and the quality of life are determined not only by the absence of dirt and dust, noise and unpleasant odors, the presence of lawns, trees, rest areas with convenient equipment, information organization, etc., but also the unity of the visual appearance of all components of this environment: design and landscape, their harmony with the nature of human. The most striking components of visual perception, close to a person, are elements of art and art objects. The present article analyses how shell structures can influence the organization of successful public spaces as art objects. Shell structures play a special, singular role for architects and engineers in the urban environment. Their shape directly derives from their flow of forces, and defines their load-bearing behavior and lightness, saving material by creating local employment, their social aspect. This is especially true for thin concrete shells with different types of curvatures, such as a single curvature, synclastic (domelike), anticlastic (saddle-like) or even free (experimental). There are a lot of methods and approaches to create a shell structure, from physical hanging modeling to a complicated analysis using modern software. One of them is the Force Density Method, which was introduced by Linkwitz and Schek during their work with Frei Otto on the cable net structures of the Olympic stadium in Munich. A number of shell structures with different esthetic and structural characteristics have been created using this method. These shells are created on a human scale, organizing urban spaces. A successful place has to combine such attributes as physical space, the sensory experience, and activity. The created objects are environment dominants, which fill the space with a semantic content in social, psychological and cultural dimensions.