Early gridshells

ALTHOUGH THE RUSSIAN structural engineer

Vladimir Shukov (1853-1939) constructed the world’s

first lightweight metal gridshells at Vyksa near Nizhny

Novgorod, Russia, in 1897, the German architect Frei Otto

(1925-2015), who was awarded the Pritzker Architecture

Prize posthumously in 2015, is considered to be the

father of modern timber gridshell architecture. Using

methods similar to those employed by Antoni Gaudí,

for the form-finding and design of the Church of the

Colonia Güell, Santa Coloma de Cervéllo, near Barcelona

(Tomlow, 1989), Frei Otto had been experimenting with

nets of fine chains, as a means of determining the form

of potential double-curved spatial structures, since the

late 1940s (Otto and Rasch, 1995: 136). His particular

insight had been to perceive that the three-dimensional

form generated by a quadrangular network of hanging

chains could be constructed using an initially flat,

semi-rigid, lattice of timber laths or steel bars (Happold

and Liddell, 1975: 99). He referred to this lattice structure

as a Gitterschale, which is translated into English as

gridshell.