romain

About Romain Mesnil

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So far Romain Mesnil has created 8 blog entries.

Envelopes of gridshells

Since 2013 Elastic gridshells are often covered with stretched membranes. While this solution is economical, it offers poor performances in terms of acoustic or thermic insulation. This restricts the application of elastic gridshells to temporary buildings. This page shows two research projects proposing alternatives to membranes for the [...]

By |2021-04-26T11:30:51+02:00March 15th, 2016|Morphogenesis|0 Comments

Design and construction of gridshells

Since 2004 The gridshells built by the Navier laboratory are made of a flat composite grid deformed elastically to obtain the shape desired. The design of the gridshell is based on many numerical simulations and on experience acquired during the fabrication of several full-scale prototypes. [...]

By |2021-04-26T11:30:56+02:00March 1st, 2016|Structure|0 Comments

Stability of gridshells

Since 2013 Gridshells can encounter extremely large displacements before the ruin of any element. This phenomenon, known as buckling, is critical for the reliability of structures and should be avoided. Shells and gridshells are extremely sensitive to buckling. The influence of the forces brought by the shaping process [...]

By |2021-04-26T11:31:01+02:00March 1st, 2016|Structure|0 Comments

Fabrication-aware design

Since 2014 Free-form architecture challenges designers and makers. Non-standard geometries bring many issues for the rationalisation of facades and structural layout.  This research investigates two fabrication constraints relevant for glazed structures: the covering of doubly-curved shapes with planar facets, and the proper offset of support structure. [...]

By |2021-04-26T11:31:21+02:00February 24th, 2016|Morphogenesis|0 Comments

Nexorades and reciprocal structures

Since 2000 Systems consisting of beams mutually supporting each other have been known for centuries, they are referred as reciprocal systems. Numerous illustrations of such structural systems can be found in the book of O. Popovic Larsen. The term 'nexorade' describes the spatial generalisation of the flat beam [...]

By |2021-04-26T11:31:40+02:00January 3rd, 2016|Morphogenesis, Structure|0 Comments