Architecture students design, build innovative gridshell projects

Olivia Almeida will be among a small group of University of Louisiana architecture students who visit the University of North Carolina at Charlotte next week.
Students and professors from each school will swap knowledge about designing and building dome-shaped structures called gridshells. The gridshells are made of a latticework of wood sheathed in metal, plastic or other material.
It will be the second such trip in about four months for Almeida, who earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Louisiana in 2014, and is pursuing a master’s degree.
In October, she and seven other UL students visited Cheticamp, a fishing community on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada. There, they scoped out a gridshell being used as a farmer’s market that was designed and built by students and professors at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
“We got to learn about some of the problems that they were having, so that we can anticipate those in our projects,” Almeida said.
The work is all part of the Thinking While Doing project, funded by a $2.48 million grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Nine universities, and Parks Canada, a governmental agency run by that country’s minister of the environment, are participating in the six-year project.
Students, professors and community officials collaborate to design and build projects in their communities.
In summer 2016, students from several universities, including UL, will gather in Nova Scotia to build a structure together. Sociologists and anthropologists from several Canadian universities will document and study the project.
The purpose of the project is to develop and test construction technologies and processes, said Geoff Gjertson, a professor of architecture at UL.
A comprehensive database of “best practices” is being assembled as the project progresses. It can be used by communities who want to build their own gridshells or as a teaching tool by architecture students.
“It’s not just about the structural and architectural aspects of these projects, but the teaching part of it, too. It’s about ‘How do you best teach architects through these kinds of projects?’ ” Gjertson said.
At UL, about 16 undergraduate and graduate students have been involved with the project since the grant was awarded in March 2013. They have been designing their own gridshell, and plan to erect the structure as one of the first installments at an art park along Camellia Boulevard.
“It will be a pavilion, a place where joggers and walkers can stop and get out of the sun,” Gjertsen said. Signs with information about artwork in the park will be posted inside the pavilion.
The art park project is being coordinated with Lafayette Consolidated Government and the Acadiana Center for the Arts.
Grant funds will pay for the bulk of the estimated $40,000 gridshell, Gjertson said. Several organizations and companies are expected to donate in-kind services.
Construction is likely to begin later this spring or summer.
Almeida, for one, can’t wait. “To be able to collaborate with professionals, such as engineers, is great real-world experience.”
Image info: The rendering pictured is of a gridshell, which are dome-shaped structures made of a latticework of wood sheathed in metal, plastic or other material. UL architecture students will design and build their own gridshell as part of the Thinking While Doing project, which is funded by a $2.48 million grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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