All the renderings are done in the Maxwell plug-in for Rhino. There's still a lot more to post but I'm letting some of the renderings run for a day or two to clean up all the noise.
Preliminary orthographic drawings of the structural system - it's missing the cabling that runs from the base of the arches to the other side and instead has foundations.
Exploded axonometric drawing of the wooden parabolic arches with cabling.
I'll explain more of this later but basically the structural idea going on is that the canopy structure is 120' wide and 40' tall (1:3 ratio). The arches are parabolic and self supporting (angled to support one another) and are a closed system in that their ends are tied together with steel cable running underground. The arches themselves are glue-lams, which is engineered wood that resists bending, warping, etc. far better than solid timber. The glue-lams are 2' deep and 1' wide. The whole thing is covered by 7 ETFE (ETFE is a polymer developed by DuPont that has a tensile strength of 6,000 psi, weights 1% as much as glass, lets in more light than glass, is not made from oil, is completely recyclable, and is not affected by UV damage - sort of, the take-away is that as far as anyone can tell it has an indefinite lifespan) pillows which run about 320' long, 18' wide, and at their deepest are about 2' thick. They're kept inflated by a low pressure air compressor that uses about as much energy as a 40W light bulb. The ETFE is held by aluminum extrusions which are supported by steel cabling to prevent uplift and bending due to gravity. The arches are supported by brick and concrete steel reinforced piers... that's all for now.
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