TensiNet/COST TU1303 Symposium
26 - 28 October 2016
The TensiNet - COST Action TU1303 Symposium 2016 was organised by the TensiNet association COST Action TU1303 Novel Structural Skins and Newcastle University as hosting university.
The symposium was the fifth of a series that began in Brussels in 2003: Designing Tensile Architecture, and continued in Milano in 2007: Ephemeral Architecture: Time and Textiles, Sofia in 2010: Tensile Architecture: Connecting Past and Future, and in Istanbul in 2013: [RE]THINKING Lightweight Structures.
Novel structural skins - Improving sustainability and efficiency through new structural textile materials and designs
The urban built environment is being transformed by building skins derived from textile architecture. Working from a basis of tensioned membranes, these highly efficient structural forms are now being integrated with multi-disciplinary technologies to form new multi-functional systems that address the needs and global challenges of the urban built environment. The rapid emergence of lightweight building skins is in response to factors associated with climate change, energy, and workplace health and well-being, and is directly linked to advances in material development, analysis tools, and skills in design.
The fifth symposium Novel structural skins was divided into five main topics relating to the Working Groups within the COST Action, and an extra sixth topic, which was the theme of the Open Session:
- New applications of structural skins and new concepts
- Sustainability and Life Cycle Analysis of structural skins
- Building physics and energy performance of structural skins
- Materials and analysis
- From material to structure and limit states: codes and standardization
- Built Projects: Open Session
These research topics are well related to the built environment.
An Open Session was scheduled for the afternoon and evening of Wednesday 26 October 2016. Prominent experts in the membrane architecture and engineering world presented their inspiring built projects to demonstrate to the audience the multitude of possibilities that lightweight structures have.
The proceedings are published in an online issue of Procedia Engineering on www.ScienceDirect.com and are freely accessible (open access) in perpetuity to a worldwide audience.
