Berkeley Weave – Berkeley, San Francisco

2016

The saddle-shaped design of the Berkeley Weave is based on a modified Enneper surface. This particular form was chosen because it has a challenging anticlastic geometry with locally high curvature. The subsequent conversion process into a bending-active plate structure followed several steps. The first was to approximate and discretize the surface with a quad mesh. A curvature analysis of the resulting mesh reveals that its individual quads are not planar but spatially curved. The planarity of the quads, however, will be an important precondition in the later assembly process. In a second step, the mesh was transformed into a four-layered weave pattern with composed strips that feature pre-drilled holes. Here, each quad was turned into a crossing of two strips in one direction with two other strips at a 90-degree angle. The resulting interwoven mesh was then optimized for planarization.

Images © Simon Schleicher / RLM

Design, engineering and scientific development

Dr.-Ing. Riccardo La Magna,
Asst. Prof. Simon Schleicher

assembly and construction

Rex Crabb,
Andrei Nejur,
Sean Ostro