## Archive for the ‘Research’ Category

### BRG @ the 2016 IASS Symposium in Tokyo

With eight papers covering a wide range of exciting topics, the Block Research Group was  strongly represented at the 2016 Symposium of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Sturctures (IASS), held September 26-30 at the University of Tokyo. You can check out all the papers on our website.

### BRG XCard 2015

For our holiday card this year, we explored bringing 3D reciprocal diagrams into virtual reality! On the front of our holiday card, are planar projections of 3D reciprocal snowflakes. Using the “BRG XCard 2015” app, you will be able to see the holographic projections of the 3D reciprocal snowflakes in real-time! If you understand the frame-like snowflake as the structure (under given external loads, or equivalent self-stress), the forces within the bars of that structure are proportional to the areas of the corresponding, perpendicular faces of the solidlike snowflake.

Have you seen our new book, Shell Structures for Architecture: Form finding and optimization? It has been co-edited with Sigrid Adriaenssens and Chris Williams, and features 37 authors from around the globe, both from practice and academia. You can order the book here.

In Chapter 6: Force Density Method by Prof. Em. Klaus Linkwitz, this well-known form-finding method is explained in thorough detail. However, page 64, eq. (6.23) simply gives the gradient of four branch lengths relative to the coordinates of their shared node. Here, we provide some additional detail on how the result of that equation is derived.

### LaTeX, and how to find those darn symbols

Ever wonder why most if not all your lecture notes have the same layout? Most likely, they were made using LateX.  LateX, pronounced `lay-tech’, is a markup language in which documents can be written before being automatically typeset by a TeX program. It offers programmable desktop publishing, instead of visual (WYSIWYG) desktop publishing offered by programs like Adobe InDesign or Microsoft Word. The reason for using LateX is to focus on content, not on the layout. This does mean giving up a certain amount of control over presentation, or spending disproportionate amounts of time if you wish to enforce certain things in the layout. LateX is also a means to write and possibly share equations. Visual equation editors like MathType use LateX, and all equations in Wikipedia are interpreted from LateX code.