Design and fabrication of a reusable kit of parts for diverse structures

Abstract Reusing structural components for multiple service cycles has potential to lower building structures environmental impact because it reduces material resource use, energy consumption, and waste production. One strategy to reuse structural components is to design structures that can be assembled, taken apart, and reassembled in new configurations. This paper presents a new computational workflow to design a bespoke kit of parts that can be employed to build structures of diverse typologies and that are not restricted to repetitive modular arrangements. Key to this method is the optimization of structural members and joints (i.e. the kit of parts) that fit multiple geometries and different structural requirements. The proposed method includes form finding and digital fabrication and it applies to the design of trusses, gridshells, and space frames. This method has been successfully applied to build three pavilion-scale prototypes from only half the number of parts compared to one-off construction.

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