Saqib Fazal

Student at the Fab Academy

Work as head of design and production at a tent manufacturing concern

Student at the lightweight structures program at the Vienna University of Technology

My Final project involves the design and analysis of a steel grid shell structure, with fabric formed concrete roofing panels made with UHPC. The building will self regulate its internal environment by automatically opening vents in the roof and sides depending on wind speed and internal temperature. The vents will be actuated by pneumatic cylinders fed by a central air compressor controlled by a circuit board./control system. Temperature and wind speed sensors will feed input data to the control system.

I plan to use fablab to design and build the control system.

Other parts of the project where fablab will be used are – milling of the gridshell connection nodes.

top view of the grid shell showing principal U-V directions

side elevation

front elevation

rendered view showing UHPC roofing panels

closeup of the concrete panels

example of node – can be optimized and fabricated digitally

example of a real grid shell – Guanghzou Opera House