Parametric Analysis of the Dome of the Sports Palace of Mexico City

Abstract

The Sports Palace of Mexico City was built in 1968 and became a turning point in the design and construction of laminar shells, leading the transition from reinforced concrete to metallic grid structures. Felix Candela observed that the use of concrete in designing laminar structures was limited to achieve great spans for sport spaces; he thus changed his first proposal for using a concrete laminar shell to a metallic structure. However, in the first architectural conception of the metallic structure, a lighter cable structure was proposed respecting the built geometry, with the intent of using high-strength wires in the upper and lower chords of the arches. In this paper, three different proposals are modeled. The first uses a 3D modelled concrete shell for understanding the geometry. The others use the final geometry and are analyzed using advanced NURBS (Non-uniform rational Bspline) modeling techniques with Rhinoceros and a parametric design with Grasshopper, where the parameters and results obtained in previous tests are compared with the results obtained in the simulations. Paneling plugins, forces simulation add-ons, finite elements analysis and environmental design simulation tools in Grasshopper are used to compare the results under normal design conditions.