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STICK.S lightweight structural system


Designer: Wilfredo Mendez
Instructor:
Luis G Daza
Project Type: UPR MArch Thesis 2013
TOS[er]: Yomara Rivera
Posted: May 2013

Project Recognition:

  • Published by Ask Nature, 2011
  • AIA Henry Adams Award, 2010
  • Merits and research grant by the University of Puerto Rico, 2009
  • Who’s Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges, 2008
  • Dan-El Viera Oliveros Award, 2007
  • Hispanic Scholarship Fund Grant, 2005


Design Objectives:

  • The human skeleton is a model for structural systems.
  • The femur’s form advises reinforced concrete frames.
  • Biomorphic geometries increase the building’s mechanical, structural and sustainable performance; especially in response to lateral forces.
  • Specifically addresses the seismic geographical conditions of the Caribbean and Latin America; even the strongest construction materials, like reinforced concrete, becomes vulnerable when devastated by a seismic wave.
  • Reduces material waste and energy needed for fabrication.


Wilfredo’s Mental Tectonics:

  • A structural system based on the biological adaptation of bone morphology to reduce structural material and optimize reinforced concrete.
  • Biomimicry principles are strategically applied to drop seismic vulnerability of reinforced concrete structures.
  • STICK.S (Stick System) applies Wolff’s Law to a lightweight structural system that adapts material resources to force structure diagrams employing them where needed.
  • Without compromising load resistances STICK.S reduces the necessary concrete by 30 % and decreases the CO2 component by approximately 118 lbs.
Yomara’s TOSS: STICK.S recognizes the need to move to efficient architecture. One that not only responds to nature and eco-systems, but that is aware of the environmental variables, like earth quakes, that actually resumes all the threatening forces of nature in one. Nature is the best example for a better structural composition, if you look at it closely it keeps repeating the original form as fractal does, every time smaller.