ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: Structure is a crucial element of an architectural design. Appropriately integrated structural elements in a building design can help articulate building functionality and often stimulate new architectural style ideas. A challenge in teaching structures to architecture students, however, is how to make the repetitive routine math calculations of necessary to optimize structural member selection more engaging to architectural study. This paper presents the authors’ recent search for effective methods to teach seismic and wind impact mitigation subjects to architecture students. Earthquake and/or wind capable building can best be included at the initial concept design stage. Not only can such techniques help find the best integrated architecture-structure solution, it may well be the best and most cost effective design solution for seismic and wind load resistance. This paper describes examples of student projects, including 1) constructing a simple shake table for structural responses study of irregular structural configurations, 2) building form and wind effect study, 3) presenting newly developed teaching apparatuses, a low cost shake table capable of tri-axial shaking, and 4) demonstrating double-fan, open circuit wind tunnel for relative differential wind pressure on irregular building form. The proposed shake table and wind tunnel are intended to be placed in the architecture studio for integration into the architecture students’ basic structural learning.
