98
99
AHO WORKS RESEARCH 2012
RCAT
AUXILIARY ARCHITECTURES - COMPLEX MEMBRANE
AND CABLE-NET SYSTEMS
PROJECT LEADERS:
Michael U. Hensel, Søren Sørensen,
Defne Sunguroglu Hensel
FUNDER / DURATION:
RCAT Strategic Budget / 2012
NETWORK / COLLABORATORS 2012:
BOMA Inpasa, Barcelona
OCEAN Design Research Association
ACTIVE RESEARCHERS 2012:
Prof. Dr, Michael U. Hensel, Prof. Søren Sørensen,
Prof. Guillem Baraut Bover, Lecturer Joakim Hoen
+ Master-level students in The Extended Threshold
Studio Fall 2012
Light structures, such as textile membrane construc-
tions, offer an effective and feasible way to provide aux-
iliary architectures for existing buildings with insuf-
ficient space for different kinds of use or insufficient
climatic performance. This entails that solving exist-
ing problems does not necessarily require the demo-
lition of architectures that are deficient, but, instead,
the development of means of supplementing the built
environment in specific ways. The development of sup-
plementary designs constitutes an interesting field for
interdisciplinary collaboration involving architects and
industrial designers, as well as structural and environ-
mental engineers and can significantly benefit from col-
laborative research by design. The Extended Threshold
studio focuses on this type of research and the related
development of complex membrane and cable-net sys-
tems, a line of inquiry that commenced at AHO in 2008
with the Membrane Spaces studio. Physical form-find-
ing methods and computational modelling and visualis-
ationmethods and tools, such as Augmented Reality and
Virtual Reality, play a key role in the process of devel-
oping auxiliary architectures. This extends the scope
of inquiry from concept and design development and
analysis, to questions of workflow, workspace, tools and
techniques, and the way architectural practice might
need to be rethought in order to accommodate a new
and potentially vast market segment.
