Stereodome I : design , fabrication and installation of a Styrofoam masonry vault

This paper presents the steps of design, fabrication and installation of a Styrofoam masonry vault, produced in 2018 at the Polytechnic School at the University of São Paulo (POLI-USP), in the context of a graduate course on Light Structures. The challenge of the project was to design and deliver an innovative structural prototype, in a relevant scale. The project selected by the students was a funicular, three-legged masonry vault laying within a 3.0m diameter circle. The structure was form-found using graphic statics. Then it was discretized into 45 irregular bricks cut out from 10cm thick Styrofoam bulk blocks, with the aid of a CNC hot wire router machine. An efficient stereotomy technique was applied to ensure that adjacent bricks could be fabricated with minimum waste of material and high precision in the final shape. The structure was nicknamed ‘Stereodome I’ and resulted in an eye-catching curved complex surface that was exhibited for months at the Civil Engineering Building of POLI-USP.