Check out this crazy project from Mehrzad & Somayyeh at Sci-Arc.  Made to better bridge the gap between digitally designed, computational geometries and their physical construction, it’s a series of small shading structures made to form a network that shades an entire stadium.  Check it out.

STUDENT: Mehrzad Rafeei & Somayyeh Ramezani
SCHOOL: Sci – Arc
PROFESSORS: Marcelo Spina
COURSE: Summer Studio 
YEAR: 2012

“Contemporary digital design has always had a certain disconnection with its possible physical incarnation. Abstracted away from material properties, digital geometry floats in Euclidean space unaware of the physical constraint of what it represents. Our project attempts to bridge that divergence. Knitted Cloud is a digital fabricated and mass customized solution for an expandable urban canopy system. It is the result of an integrated process involving handcrafted manufacturing and generative digital design applied for robotic mass production. The handcrafted fabrication of the weave semi rigid textile tectonic serves as logic for a generative script that allows for multiple variations in design consistent with the physical form.

Our design approach is generating a “network Cluster” of smaller units rather than a large mega structure aiming to shield large sporting events in Qatar Stadium from direct sunlight while providing favorable climate environment. Regarding to that, the idea that we took is based on the Catenary System which commonly used to evenly apply pre-tensioning loads on to membranes for space inflatable structures.”