ABSTRACT
The late Danish engineer Ture Wester identified an unexploited potential in using pure plate structures for constructing approximated doubly curved surfaces in architecture. Our interdisciplinary, independent research group has taken up that challenge. By means of digital design and fabrication, and based on Wester’s significant work on the dualistic geometric and structural relationship between lattice and plate structures, we have developed a modular building system named SPACEPLATES. Similar to the well-known term space frame, SPACEPLATES is also a rigid lightweight structure able to carry loads simultaneously through compression and tension forces. The difference is, as the name suggests, that the SPACEPLATES Building System is based on plates as structural members rather than a frame of struts and nodes.
