doi:10.3850/978-981-08-7920-4_S2-A21-cd


Plastic Materials in Façade Applications: New Chances for Combination of Design and Construction in Temporary Architecture


Thomas Ries

Evonik Röhm GmbH, Kirschenallee, Darmstadt, Germany

ABSTRACT

In the contemporary architecture façade design is getting more and more important. Primary in the last years you find plastic materials in exterior applications. After the architectural period of the sixties and seventies buildings with plastic materials especially in facade applications disappeared new in the Nineties as it is caused by the digitalization of the planning offices in our time. Finding structures and forms with the help of digitalized mediums brings us to a leaving of material reality. Every form, every structure seems to be possible, is simulated, and new complex geometries and new ideas of spaces and designing buildings can be created. Not only the architectural designs of building envelopes with plastic materials change. These kinds of new façade design need new ideas for structure design suitable to the special technical attitudes of this material which sometimes is completely new or foreign for architects and civil engineers and give them a new challenge to create innovative solutions. Different contemporary projects show the combination of the design ideas and the structural demands and therefore the subsequent demands for the material can be explained very well by them and shows the innovative processes and solutions for finding new principles of technical design and structure with plastic materials especially in façade applications.

Keywords: Facade, Plastic materials, Oskar-von-miller tower, Vitra, Transparency, Material Attitudes.



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