Beyond Bending
Exhibition at the Venice Biennale 2016, including the Armadillo Vault.
Beyond Bending was exhibited at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, curated by Alejandro Aravena. Its centerpiece, the Armadillo Vault, is a 15-metre-span, compression-only vault of 399 individually cut sandstone blocks, unreinforced and held together by geometry alone. The exhibition also included prototypes of funicular concrete floor systems, demonstrating how structural form can drastically reduce material use. The Armadillo Vault was shortlisted for the 2017 Structural Awards of the Institution of Structural Engineers and received the DETAIL Prize 2016 Readers’ Prize.
Location: Venice, Italy Year: 2016
Credits
- Block Research Group — ETH Zürich
- John Ochsendorf — MIT
- ODB Engineering, Escobedo Construction