#structure

This project aims to promote the widespread use of earthen architecture in new urban and rural developments, in line with the overarching goal of sustainable cities. The potential solutions earthen architecture offers across various dimensions, such as human health, efficient resource utilization, locality, economic viability, and cultural continuity, can only be realized to the extent that they are integrated into the construction sector. When the vernacular knowledge embedded in local architectural solutions is enhanced through modern design-to-production technologies, earthen architecture…

Last month, we completed the third edition of the Robotic Earthcrafts workshop series, which I co-organized with Fulya Akipek, following the first in 2018 and the second in 2023. An earthen mixture composed of clayey soil, lime, fibers, and cement was rammed into molds produced via robotic hot-wire cutting. The geometry of the fabricated wall is based on a hexagonal grid and features a Truchet-like variation. Constructed using four different block types, the wall was completed within 5 days and…

Rammed earth is an unpredictable, labor-intensive building material, and far less durable than concrete. It cannot deliver the standard strength expected by engineering academia. And perhaps it is for the better that it cannot. Because it tells us an entirely different story. It reminds us architectural thinking that dares to look outside the box. What I want to share here, is not just a simple studio project, but a profound life lesson for many of us here, lived in the…

The 2025 IAAC Istanbul Summer school was conducted at İstanbul Bilgi University last year. Yesterday, a video was published about it on YouTube. It was prepared by Arkitekt. Here is the video: This reminded me the workshop and I decided to write about my side of the study. The reciprocal structure was designed by Gamze Gündüz, where she finalized it using a Grasshopper code. Then, the timber elements were labeled and sized with the help of Grasshopper again and integrated…

The regular dodecahedron is one of the five Platonic solids, characterized by having 12 regular pentagonal faces, 20 vertices, and 30 edges. When you elongate it, you extend its structure in one or more directions, resulting in a shape that retains the basic properties of the dodecahedron but is stretched out. The elongated dodecahedron might not catch your eye at first—it’s just a long version of a shape you’ve probably seen before, and it seems pretty basic. But don’t be…

The rhombic dodecahedron is a polyhedron with twelve rhombus-shaped faces, where each face has four sides of equal length. It is possible to construct the space-filling variant of the rhombic dodecahedron by arranging multiple such rhombic dodecahedra in a regular pattern so that they fill space without leaving any gaps. In his 1611 work on snowflakes titled “Strena seu de Nive Sexangula,” Johannes Kepler observed that honey bees utilize the geometric structure of rhombic dodecahedra to construct honeycombs. These honeycombs…

Geodesic refers to the shortest path between two points on a curved surface. It is based on the principles of geodesy, which is the science of measuring the Earth’s shape. On the other hand, in architecture and design, a geodesic dome is a spherical or hemispherical structure consisting of a network of geodesic lines (great-circle arcs) forming triangles. Therefore, the dome’s framework provides strength and stability, distributing stress throughout its structure. Buckminster Fuller popularized and developed the concept of the…

The interlocking frame structures represent a quintessential example of parametric design since very old times. More recently, they gained widespread attention through the Metropol Parasol in Seville, captivating architects and designers. I’ve extensively explored these structures on this blog, attempting various methods like manual slit drawing and solid/region boolean operations. My latest iteration aimed for greater simplicity and adaptability on complex surfaces. I call this new version Interlocking Pavilion. The ribs now align perpendicularly to the surface, which is a…

Here is a simple pavilion design I call the Turtle Pavilion. It was exceptionally easy. The planar shapes placed on the sphere continue to be planar after the ellipsoidal deformations. I was amazed when I first noticed this, for some reason. With Grasshopper’s Facet Dome component, we can panel spheres as we desire. When we deform these panels in the X, Y, and Z directions, they continue to remain planar. After deformation, we can create the desired macro forms by…

The Weaire-Phelan structure is an optimal solution to the problem of partitioning space into equal volumes with the least surface area. Denis Weaire and Robert Phelan discovered it in 1993. This structure gained attention due to its efficiency in filling space, offering a configuration that achieves a more balanced distribution of volume and surface area compared to other known structures at the time. Here is my model for the Weaire-Phelan space-filling structure. The Weaire-Phelan structure consists of two different shapes:…