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Voss Surfaces: A Design Space for Geodesic Gridshells

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Minimal surface

In mathematics, a minimal surface is a surface that locally minimizes its area. This is equivalent to having zero mean curvature (see definitions below). The term "minimal surface" is used because these surfaces originally arose as surfaces that minimized total surface area subject to some constraint. Physical models of area-minimizing minimal surfaces can be made by dipping a wire frame into a soap solution, forming a soap film, which is a minimal surface whose boundary is the wire frame.

Simply connected space

In topology, a topological space is called simply connected (or 1-connected, or 1-simply connected) if it is path-connected and every path between two points can be continuously transformed (intuitively for embedded spaces, staying within the space) into any other such path while preserving the two endpoints in question. The fundamental group of a topological space is an indicator of the failure for the space to be simply connected: a path-connected topological space is simply connected if and only if its fundamental group is trivial.

Geodesic dome

A geodesic dome is a hemispherical thin-shell structure (lattice-shell) based on a geodesic polyhedron. The triangular elements of the dome are structurally rigid and distribute the structural stress throughout the structure, making geodesic domes able to withstand very heavy loads for their size. The first geodesic dome was designed after World War I by Walther Bauersfeld, chief engineer of Carl Zeiss Jena, an optical company, for a planetarium to house his planetarium projector.

N-sphere

In mathematics, an n-sphere or a hypersphere is a topological space that is homeomorphic to a standard n-sphere, which is the set of points in (n + 1)-dimensional Euclidean space that are situated at a constant distance r from a fixed point, called the center. It is the generalization of an ordinary sphere in the ordinary three-dimensional space. The "radius" of a sphere is the constant distance of its points to the center. When the sphere has unit radius, it is usual to call it the unit n-sphere or simply the n-sphere for brevity.

Locally simply connected space

In mathematics, a locally simply connected space is a topological space that admits a basis of simply connected sets. Every locally simply connected space is also locally path-connected and locally connected. The circle is an example of a locally simply connected space which is not simply connected. The Hawaiian earring is a space which is neither locally simply connected nor simply connected. The cone on the Hawaiian earring is contractible and therefore simply connected, but still not locally simply connected.

Riemann sphere

In mathematics, the Riemann sphere, named after Bernhard Riemann, is a model of the extended complex plane: the complex plane plus one point at infinity. This extended plane represents the extended complex numbers, that is, the complex numbers plus a value for infinity. With the Riemann model, the point is near to very large numbers, just as the point is near to very small numbers. The extended complex numbers are useful in complex analysis because they allow for division by zero in some circumstances, in a way that makes expressions such as well-behaved.

Shell (structure)

A shell is a three-dimensional solid structural element whose thickness is very small compared to its other dimensions. It is characterized in structural terms by mid-plane stress which is both coplanar and normal to the surface. A shell can be derived from a plate in two steps: by initially forming the middle surface as a singly or doubly curved surface, then by applying loads which are coplanar to the plate's plane thus generating significant stresses. Materials range from concrete (a concrete shell) to fabric (as in fabric structures).

3-sphere

In mathematics, a 3-sphere, glome or hypersphere is a higher-dimensional analogue of a sphere. It may be embedded in 4-dimensional Euclidean space as the set of points equidistant from a fixed central point. Analogous to how the boundary of a ball in three dimensions is an ordinary sphere (or 2-sphere, a two-dimensional surface), the boundary of a ball in four dimensions is a 3-sphere (an object with three dimensions). A 3-sphere is an example of a 3-manifold and an n-sphere.

Complex geometry

In mathematics, complex geometry is the study of geometric structures and constructions arising out of, or described by, the complex numbers. In particular, complex geometry is concerned with the study of spaces such as complex manifolds and complex algebraic varieties, functions of several complex variables, and holomorphic constructions such as holomorphic vector bundles and coherent sheaves. Application of transcendental methods to algebraic geometry falls in this category, together with more geometric aspects of complex analysis.

Exotic sphere

In an area of mathematics called differential topology, an exotic sphere is a differentiable manifold M that is homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to the standard Euclidean n-sphere. That is, M is a sphere from the point of view of all its topological properties, but carrying a smooth structure that is not the familiar one (hence the name "exotic"). The first exotic spheres were constructed by in dimension as -bundles over . He showed that there are at least 7 differentiable structures on the 7-sphere.