Conceptual Design of Reciprocal Self-stressed Roof Structures with Graphic Statics

The ability to work with both form and forces in the structural design process is crucial, particularly during the early design phase, as these are key parameters that impact the static behavior of a structure. Graphic statics offers a powerful geometric framework for the conceptual design of structures in static equilibrium, owing to the interdependence between form and force diagrams. When the form diagram of a self-stressed spatial pin-jointed framework has an underlying planar graph, its corresponding force diagram is reciprocal. It can itself be viewed as a self-stressed framework whose force diagram is the original form diagram. These configurations generally possess inherent architectural elegance and structural performance, making them particularly suitable for lightweight roof structures. This contribution outlines a graphic statics workflow for generating such structures using vector- and polyhedron-based approaches.