This video tells the amazing story of how physical models were used to design, analyze, and test the experimental cable net structure for the German Pavilion at the 1967 Montreal Expo.
This ambitious project--the world's largest cable-net structure--was designed by Rolf Gutbrod and Frei Otto (with his research team at the Institute for Lightweight Structures (IL) in Stuttgart). It completed under extremely tight deadlines for design and construction and so all of the stages of a project's design were amplified in importance.
They created a series of physical models including bubble models, curved fabric tests, steel wire mesh models embedded with measure devices, a wind model, a series of "pattern" models to define the membrane geometry, AND a full-scale prototype. This full-scale prototype became the new home for Otto's research group (IL) after the project was completed.
This is a video for people that love architecture, construction history, and good stories about pre-computational design challenges.
This content was presented at the Construction History Society of America conference (CHSA8) at the University of Illinois Champaign Urbana in June 2023.
