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Renzo Piano's structural support of the
Kansai Airport
Terminal Roof on display at Nasher Sculpture Garden
in
Dallas, Texas (USA) is based on a "half-TOT" design. |
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| Dallas: This open discussion about
undeveloped billion-dollar ideas has been going on for over a decade. In
January 2001 when the new series launched we began referring to it as going
from "$0 to $1,000,000,000 In Less than a Lifetime."¹ In August 2006 this page was
introduced for the construction, architecture and industrial design industries.
These concepts are all based what Bruce Camber dubbed to be an emerging
"science of interiority²." Though it is speculative, the
information has been around since Pythagoras, Euclid and Plato. |
| Basic Structure: If you
skipped plane geometry in 9th grade, you may have a bit of a challenge. Yet,
these simple three-dimensional objects are like the building blocks that we
played with as little children; they are just all triangles. Put four triangles
together, one on the bottom, and the three sides and you have a tetrahedron.
Now, ask yourself the very simple question, "What is inside?" Very few people
have an answer. That is about to change forever because there are billion
dollar businesses within the answer. You can apply it to your industry. To help
along the way, please also begin to learn a little about algorthims.³ |
| To help this discussion along,
let's look at a simple example for the steel industry: Create your own little
model with eight-inch straws. Make four equal triangles and tape them together.
Now, put a point in the middle of each straw and connect those points with
smaller straws. With no imagination you'll see a tetrahedron in each corner
(there are four of them); and in the middle, there is an eight-sided piece.
That's called an octahedron. |
| If you were to put a bunch of
tetrahedrons and octahedrons in a straight, four-sided "line" which is really a
parallelogram, you'll be looking at what could potentially become the strongest
structural beam there can be. |
As of this writing in July
2006, there were no references inside the
Steel Construction Manual,
American Institute of Steel Construction. The closest
application is in cranes and some girders, but there are many very good ways to
use configurations of triangles. The next step is to engineer models for
stress tests.
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| Referring page ... |
more ... |
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| Billionaires ideas, concepts, business plans |
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| An
Update |
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From: Bruce Camber
Sent:
Thursday, May 31, 2007 10:59 AM
To:
Renzo
Piano
Subject: Kansai Airport Terminal, Osaka, Japan and this
structural support made of a series of tetrahedrons and just-half of each of
the octahedrons |
__________________________________
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Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano Building Workshop
34 rue des Archives 75004
Paris, France |
| Dear Renzo: |
| Last year I sent you an email as a result of
admiring your work at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, especially the
structural support system for the Kansai Airport roof. Your design model was
hanging in the main lobby of the Nasher (pictured on the left). I mistakenly
thought it was mimicking a TOT
layer. In geology a TOT layer is found within phyllosilicates. |
| Now, not quite a year later, after having made
several models of TOT beams based on the tetrahedron - octahedron - tetrahedron
layers, I can see that your beam support is what I would called "a half-TOT"
because only half the octahedron is present and half the number of tetrahedrons
are used. It appears that a full TOT structure has not been used by architects.
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| I
will, however, continue my search. |
| Yet, because the TOT could readily become the
strongest architectural support structure, might you be interested to introduce
such a discussion within your workshop, especially as a “thought
experiment” for your interns? I could send you
pictures of some models that I believe you
would find of interest. Your comments would be profoundly appreciated.
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| Warmly, |
| Bruce |
| PS. I will engage architects, engineers,
steel fabricators, aluminum fabriciators, and the construction industry as a
whole to begin discussing the use of TOT designs in the already complex mix of
building materials and structural support systems within
construction. |
| Footnote: I have never heard back in
several attempts to contact Renzo Piano. He is obviously a very busy
person. |
More:
1.
Some Thoughts on TOTs
2.
Nature's
TOT sandwich and
TOT
layers |
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