Design on the North American 2016 flagship gridshell has begun!

Design in the Halifax Studio

Parks Canada Session

Cape Breton Session

The North American design-build group first met early September to get a start on the new flagship gridshell.  With the help of student, faculty and a slew of outsiders including the public, ideas and expectations were flowing!  Slated to be built at the Cape Breton Highlands National Park Headquarters, construction will start in the summer of 2016.

Back on site for construction phase 3

Back on site in May, a crew of  10 students continued to work on the grid shell. For just under a week, we begun to implement the changes from the engineers. As we added sheer blocks to the entire structure, the grid shell became more rigid AND the top overall curve started to become more uniform! 

 A group of 4 continued for the following two weeks and eventually got the polycarbonate cladding started. The weather warmed up eventually!

Watch out below!!!!!!!!!

The aerial view of the gridshell on April 27th (all the snow is gone now, thankfully!)

Photo Credit:Stéphane Sogne, ScyllarusVision (Cheticamp)

A Chéticamp update!




A crew of six have been back at Cheticamp working on the grid shell. You have to look closely. The laths are now in a much more regular pattern, the gable ends improved, and all is closer to the ideal structural model on the computer. We have surveyed and located all the nodes and are comparing the as-builts to the computer model. Next step is installing continuous shear blocking between the laths along the main stress lines of the shell.