The IASS 60th Anniversary Symposium (IASS SYMPOSIUM 2019) and 9th International Conference on Textile Composites and Inflatable Structures (STRUCTURAL MEMBRANES 2019) have merged into a joint international conference, FORM and FORCE 2019, aiming to provide a forum for state-of-the-art contributions and fruitful discussion in the broad fields of shell, spatial, tension and inflatable structures. The 2019 conference was held in October in Barcelona, Spain and it covered concepts related to material, design, computation, construction, maintenance, history, environmental impact and sustainability of shell, spatial, tension and inflatable structures in all fields of application.
Miguel Lopez of GMS presented a paper, Lateral Load Resisting Facades, co-authored jointly by the GMS Structural Engineers and Building Envelope consultants Miguel Lopez, Joseph Blanchfield, Philip Murray, David Kazibwe, Carolyn Bai, Ramon Gilsanz. The paper’s abstract follows:
Simple modifications to traditional curtain wall slab anchors allow designers to incorporate a structure’s building envelope system into its lateral system, leading not only to improved structural performance, but a reduction in the building construction’s carbon footprint. This approach of integrating architecture with structural design to optimize building performance and construction embodies the principles of efficiency, economy, and elegance championed by the late Princeton Professor David Billington. In this paper, the potential benefits of utilizing façade members to contribute to the building stiffness is studied by reanalyzing 510 Madison Avenue, a 2012 Class-A steel high-rise office building in Manhattan. The building’s lateral system is comprised of moment and braced frames. The building’s façade is a unitized aluminum curtain wall system that utilizes traditional curtain wall anchors designed to prevent the transfer of loads between the façade and the structure.
GMS Partners Philip Murray, Ramon Gilsanz and colleagues Zoe Champion and Helena Ariza also attended the conference, noting the networking opportunities and planned workshops to learn about new software applications, among other things. For more information, click here.