Spatial and structural aspects of polyhedra

Fine architectural spaces can be found inside polyhedra. Used in clusters, polyhedra could create a versatile form language for the design of practical and beautiful buildings. Our case study is a close-packing system of truncated octahedra, cuboctahedra, and truncated tetrahedra (TO, CO, and TT respectively). A 3–D computer model is used to examine the structural performance of a single TO under gravity load and wind lateral load. The structural analysis focuses on the behavior of TOʹs envelope. The analysis revealed differential in-plane translations and rotations between floors contributed mostly to gravity load. As a result, large end-moments are observed in particular members of the envelope. Results demonstrate that a single TO can transfer typical vertical and lateral wind loads to a configuration with larger number of modules.