Transformable building structures in architectural engineering education

In the last decade, various types of transformable building structures have been developed, such as deployable tensegrity, scissor-like and origami-inspired systems, as well as reconfigurable rigid-bar linkage and adaptive compliant structures. The development of the systems owns to advances in material design and kinetics, while aiming at an improved sustainability of the built environment. Their conceptualization and investigation have been enabled through associative parametric design and numerical analysis facilities that meanwhile provide robust digital visualizations and numerical analysis models. In principle, responsive building structures are capable to adapt to changing functional, loading, or environmental conditions. At university level, the integrated architectural design that involves an integrative development of the building form, functions and technical system parameters is increasingly enriched by performance-based design approaches through interdisciplinary experimentation and design-driven research, i.e., ‘integrated interdisciplinary design’, for the achievement of efficiency, sustainability and technological innovation in architecture. The paper discusses related influencing modes and preliminary design results of an integrated interdisciplinary approach driven by aspects of modularity, flexibility, transportability, deployability, adaptivity and interactivity, as well as their implications towards a framework of related research. The design projects presented have been supervised by the authors in recent years at the University of Cyprus and the University of Stuttgart. In all cases, the design methodology followed enables students to consider related morphological, functional and structural requirements, while being exposed to transformable building structures as related to aspects of materiality, functionality, sustainability and aesthetics.