KTM-Museum

The Austrian motorbike and sports car manufacturer KTM has commissioned HOFBAUER:ARCHITECT and X ARCHITEKTEN with the ambitious task of designing a museum for their company. Our office supervises the structural design of the slim cantilevering façade elements and their supporting structure, which represent an essential architectural feature.

We have decided for extensive parametric modelling in Rhino and Grasshopper in order to test different versions of the structure fast and efficiently. Furthermore this model enables us to elegantly optimize certain parameters such as frame element spacing. With this strategy the best possible structural results considering all given restrictions can be found.

In the following video one of those optimizations is demonstrated. In this case it is a simple geometric problem:

The outer elliptical cylinder surface of the façade consists of a ladder structure which is attached to carrying frames. Due to reasons related to production the vertical rods of the ladder should have even distances to one another. The frames on the other hand meet the ladder at very irregular points. The object of optimization is to maximize the smallest distance between the frames and the vertical rods of the ladder in order to obtain a logical grid without intersecting profiles.