sussex street

Year.2013  //  Area.45 SQM  //  Location. Sydney. Land of Eora Nation  //   Urban Future  //  Images. Luke Butterley

Minimum Tension Canopy is a new roof structure sited on a constrained apartment terrace in Sydney’s CBD. The terrace is located on the second floor of a residential tower and receives the brunt of debris that falls from the neighbour’s balconies above. This makes the terrace quite unsafe for the owners and their three young children to use. Our aim was to build a canopy that could funnel this rubbish into safe containers and still create a great space for entertaining and play for the kids.

Using a particle system written for a parametric program, we were able to use the site constraints (such as boundary conditions) to inform a compressional structure based on Hooke’s law. The resulting form is constructed from a number of laser cut and folded triangular components that act as steel angles, forcing the loads towards the boundaries. Additionally, due to the restrictive access on site, the canopy’s structural organisation acts as series of smaller interlocking components which allow for effective site logistics and installation. Each component varies in width and depth according to their structural requirements