…To shape or to form? – that is the question, which the famous American architect Mr. Nicolas Goldsmith has asked the engineers, architects, industrial producers, students and professorship today. The question refers to the point on how to make the urban spaces’ architecture look more beautiful in the most sustainable way. And for this question academus have gathered membrane architecture community for the practical brain-storming, learning and making business within the 24th International Symposium on Design and Practical Realization of Membrane Structures “Textile Roofs” – 2019.

The event has opened its doors today in Berlin and will last until Wednesday, providing the guests with amazing key-note speeches, as well as practical computational modeling classes with the well-known technet GmbH, physical modeling with Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and mantling sessions with 3dtex GmbH.

What we learned today, touches both – technical questions of form finding for membrane structures (introduced by Dr. Robert Roithmayr from Formfinder AG, Austria) and detailing (explained by Prof. Joseph Llorens from University of Catalonia), as well as truly scaled questions on implementing the membrane architecture features and capabilities into the smart city space. And here “Mehler” - one of the best membrane material producers – can fulfill part of the smart city dream.

They have initiated the project in Germany, starting with the city of Aachen, within which they cover the bus stop stations with the pollution absorbing material. This does not mean that we should plant less trees, but we can compensate some of them missing on the land spots, where the bus stop stations are located.