ABSTRACT
All buildings are complex. Their conception requires great imagination, speculation, anticipation, and coordination between owners, financiers, regulatory agencies, architects, and their consultants. The sourcing, refining, and transporting of construction products and components are truly global in their economic and environmental impact. Buildings must also be able to adapt to cultural transformations and volatile economic pressures to remain viable. The inherent complexity of buildings takes on many different forms of tectonic resolution. Eduard Sekler defines tectonic as the “expressive qualities which have something to do with the play of forces and corresponding arrangement of parts in the building”. The vertical structure along the front and back of the building that supports the large trusses is separated into thin tensile rods and thick compression columns. Diagonal tensile bracing connects each structural bay to provide the lateral bracing for the structural frame.
