What happens when a pavilion is designed for the memory of a building instead of the building itself? Materia Assente reconstructs an architectural volume as a wire-mesh lattice: poetic in concept, resolved entirely through finite element analysis and evolutionary optimisation.
Context
IAAC · Barcelona
Year
2025
Stack
Kangaroo · Crystallon · Alpaca FEA · Galapagos
Brief
Materia Assente explores the intersection of poetic parametric design and rigorous structural integrity. The project seeks to answer a complex question: how can we create a structure that feels like a ghost — evoking ancient forms — while maintaining the structural stability required for a real-world pavilion?
01 · Concept
Instead of solid walls, complex lattice structures reconstruct the volume of an architectural form, filtering the landscape through a wire-mesh transparency. The concept is poetic; the execution is purely mathematical.
02 · Workflow
Boolean form-finding carves the ghost geometry; Crystallon voxelises it into a BC Cubic cell topology chosen for its stability; the lattice is trimmed and loaded; Alpaca 4D runs the FEA; Galapagos refines the geometry to minimise displacement.
03 · Results
Fit inside an 8 × 6 × 4.5 m envelope with over 6 km of linear beams, glass-reinforced recycled-PET pipes, the structure weighs 202.22 kg total. Under combined gravity and wind loads it holds global displacement to 0.16 mm, peaking at 67.26 mm under maximum combined load.
04 · Trade-off
Galapagos found the densest configurations were also the strongest and the least habitable, closing off both circulation and the ghost aesthetic the project is named for. The final geometry negotiates that trade-off rather than maximising either side of it.
