A drawing of the Panetarium in Forest Park, St. Louis. The viewing screen, a spherical structure, is inside this "hyperboloid of one sheet". After viewing the stars, then it is possible to climb to the roof and view the stars in nature.
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The thickness of the shell is three inches except at the base. This form is used for the huge power plant cooling towers, which have had a record of several failures, and has since been subject to considerable research. We were the consultants for the design of the shell.
This architectural drawing shows the maintaintence facilities for Trans World Arlines outside of Kansas City. Only two of the latge hangars were built. In adition there are shops, also shell structures.
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The Engineer on this complex was Dutton Biggs of Kansas City, and my firm was a consultant on the hangars. All the structures were hyperbolic paraboloids. The shops are the typical inverted umbrellas and the hangar surfaces are all hypars.
The is the sales and maintenance facilities for the H. W. Moore Company in Denver. It was one of the first large folded plate structures to be built in this country. A display area is to the left and the parts department to the right.
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The shop facilities are typical two element folded plates and have spans of 80 ft. The display areas are a series of Z folded plates with spans of 75 ft.
Candela built hundreds of thousands of inverted umbrella hypars in Mexico. He told me that he could not charge owners what they cost. They were so inexpensive that it would undermine the industrial building market. Here is a typical building.
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The plan of each unit could be square or rectangular and dimensions varied from 40 ft. to 60 ft. In this example, the units were tilted and a clerestory served to add light to the interior.
The next photos show two different solutions for a similar problem. The first is a concourse for the St. Louis Airport. In this case it is intersecting cylindrical shells with triangular slots between elements. The shells are picked up by large ribs at the intersection of the cylinders. This enables the structure to be placed above the platform on which it rests. The ground plan of the units is 120 ft. and the thickness of the shells is 4.5 inches, goverend by buckling considerations. The shells were constructed using massive movable forms.
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The second example is from Candela, and is a manufacturing facility. The shells are hyperbolic paraboloids, and, presumably, one and one half inches thick. Buckling was not a consideration. The ground plan is 100 ft. square. Candela always used fixed forms, and erected and dismanteled them so they can be used again. Note how the shells are picked up by continuation of the end ribs. A much lighter solution than the previous example.
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Here is a picture of the previous shell under construction. Note the long ramp for workers to carry the concrete in containers up to the top, and put exactly in place. It is a very efficient system if labor is cheap.
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