ABSTRACT
The sustainability and efficiency in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry have received increasing concern in the past few decades. Further, with the advent and development of computational tools, structural optimization approaches combined with generative design have become important tools in the design process and one of the most commonly used methods for the sustainable and efficient design. Among various generative methods, a considerable approach is related to the shape grammar, which is defined by such parameters and intertwined rules with which the algorithm generates a great number of geometric solutions, potentially unexpected in the phase of algorithm writing. By combining shape grammar with structural optimization approaches, it is possible to obtain a structural grammar, which merges the geometrical/architectural aspects with structural/constructive ones. These approaches assume importance above all in structures in which the structural elements are exposed, and therefore the architectural aspects converge in the structural ones, as in the case of diagrid tall buildings or grid shell canopies. In this context, structural grammars for the generation of the optimized pattern in terms of structural weight are proposed for the aforementioned structures.
