The Parametric Bridge: Connecting Digital Design Techniques in Architecture And Engineering

tn07-090: THE PARAMETRIC BRIDGE: CONNECTING DIGITAL DESIGN TECHNIQUES IN ARCHITECTURE AND ENGINEERING New design opportunities that are facilitated by cross-disciplinary collaboration in both practice and research are available through the use of high level design software that simultaneously offers real time access to both analysis and design geometry in shared three-dimensional digital models. Here we present a collaborative research project between architects and structural engineers for the design of a pedestrian bridge, conceived to test current digital design processes in architectural and structural engineering practice with those in research through the use of models of parametrically defined associative geometry. In this project, the digital model’s architectural design geometry was constrained by the bridge’s fabrication methods and linked with its engineering analysis. Iterations of the design geometry were then optimised or ‘solved’ to produce variations according to the design parameters offered up for change. The shift of the professions from the plane to digital space exposes the possibilities of new design techniques with the exchange of design parameters potentially operating as a digital dialogue between the disciplines—a kind of digital version of Antoni Gaudi’s funicular hanging model—a metaphor of the digital space that has been developed for this project. The Parametric Bridge: Connecting Digital Design Techniques in Architecture And Engineering