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A grey arched concrete footbridge with timber steps in a tree-lined garden, people walking beneath it

Striatus

Venice, Italy · 2021 · Block Research Group, ETH Zurich, with ZHA CODE

An arched footbridge of 3D-printed concrete blocks, assembled without mortar or reinforcement.

Striatus is an arched, unreinforced masonry footbridge of 3D-printed concrete blocks, assembled without mortar. It was exhibited at the Giardini della Marinaressa during the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale. The concrete is printed in layers orthogonal to the main structural forces, giving a "striated", compression-only funicular structure that needs no reinforcement.

How COMPAS was used

The structural design ran through a COMPAS pipeline, using compas_tna for form finding and compas_3dec and compas_assembly for the analysis of the block assembly and its interface forces. The published project description also credits COMPAS with the data exchange and collaboration between the project teams.

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