La boveda gramática

This study proposes a rule-based method for creating novel combinations of compression-only vault structures, as evidenced by a tile-vault prototype, from the fields of Computational and Structural Design. A non-mechanical and non-deterministic procedure for designing vaulted buildings is detailed, using inspiration from shape grammar. The procedure makes use of shape principles to construct vaulted structures iteratively.

The grammar yields a compression-only structural language of constructible groin-vault-like structures, which breaks habits in current computational design techniques and increases the potential for designing compression-only vault structures. Nevertheless, it has been demonstrated that shape grammar-based generative algorithms can be utilized in architecture and engineering to create single-vaulted structures with fixed support requirements. The suggested method may generate aggregates of several vaults in the language, and it tackles the crucial issue of design homogeneity and predictability in the design of funicular vault systems. The technology has also been shown effective by the completion of a tile-vault building employing the Guastavino system.