Structures 18 (2019) 1
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Structures
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/structures
Editorial Special Issue: Advanced Manufacturing and Materials for Innovative Structural Design
This special issue of Structures contains updated and extended ver-
sions of a selected collection of papers presented at the 29th annual
International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS) sym-
posium in Boston, USA (16–20 July 2018). The symposium marked the
first formal gathering of the newly formed IASS Working Group 21
“Advanced Manufacturing and Materials”.
The construction sector creates and maintains a built environment
that emits about half of all carbon emissions. Recent success in reducing
operational energy and the introduction of strict targets for near-zero
energy buildings mean that embodied energy will soon become a
dominant part of whole-life energy consumption. The importance of
this shift in focus is compounded by analysis of recently constructed
buildings which demonstrates that material wastage in the order of
50% is commonplace. Lightweighting, and the minimisation of whole-
life embodied energy, requires new research that crosses effectively
between digital design and physical realisation.
IASS Working Group 21 aims to support activities in both research
and practice that will help close this gap between idea and reality. We
envisage the automated design and manufacture of building compo-
nents that collectively contribute to solving the multitude of challenges
facing the sector, including whole-life embodied energy, circular de-
sign, productivity, and construction safety.
The IASS Symposium in Boston was the ideal launch pad for the
activities of Working Group 21. The symposium theme, Creativity in
Structural Design, celebrated work that pushes beyond the status quo
and synthesizes across disciplines. The symposium saw close to 500
paper presentations. After a rigorous selection and invitation process,
along with full peer review of the subsequently extended papers, we are
pleased to present here a collection of 14 new papers in this special
issue.
The issue covers a wealth of exciting topics, joined by a common
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.istruc.2019.03.016
2352-0124/ © 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Institution of Structural Engineers.
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thread of digital design linked to physical construction. Realised pro-
jects range in scale from benchtop proof of concept to full-size build-
ings. One can find papers concerning natural materials, along with
concrete, carbon fibre, masonry, timber, plastics, ice, and steel.
Construction techniques examined include thin tile vaulting, robotic
winding of carbon fibre, robotic extrusion, robotic milling, and fabric
formwork. The papers here present new concepts in how we might do
more with less material, and how existing structures might be effec-
tively reused in the future to support a more circular economy.
The wealth of ideas presented in this special issue highlight that the
construction sector is poised to change significantly in the coming
years. We hope that the papers presented here inspire and challenge
you to grasp the potential of such disruptive change to support efforts to
minimise energy and materials in construction.
We are extremely grateful to the IASS Executive Council and
Working Bureau for their continuing support of Working Group 21. We
thank the authors of the papers in this special issue for their extremely
diligent work during the revision process and thank all the reviewers
for their constructive criticisms and suggestions on the papers. We hope
you enjoy reading this special issue and look forward to meeting you at
future IASS-WG21 events.
John Orr (Dr)
University of Cambridge, UK
Professor
Arno Pronk
TU Eindhoven, Netherlands
Professor
Tim Ibell
University of Bath, UK