Fulton Street’s most prominent architectural feature is the slanted, hyperboloid domed atrium of glass and steel that serves as the main complex. Stretched within that structure is its sculptural centrepiece, a dramatic cable net whose reflective panels will bounce natural light down to the lowest level of the atrium. Arup’s structural designers applied parametric modeling tools to work out the sculpture’s complex, non-uniform geometry.
The cable net’s unique, curving lines come from a system of tensioned cables, connected at thousands of points via a standard, universal component. Each individual connection is subject to unique stresses based on its position within the cable net. Even minor changes to the overall design of the cable net would change its overall geometry and affect the individual components.
Arup devised a computerised design technique that effectively unified architectural and structural representations of the vastly complex structure. The technique links Building Information Modelling to the power of parametric design, by which individual components are defined by their geometry, not their actual size.
The result was a flexible, interactive “real-time” model of the structure. In this manner, the impact of changes to even a single structural attribute would be instantly reflected throughout the overall structure and its subcomponents, allowing for rapid design assessment and validation.