Revisiting the City Tower Project: Geometric Principles and Structural Morphology in the Works of Louis I. Kahn and Anne Tyng

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the geometric principles of Louis Kahn and Anne Tyng's unbuilt City Tower project, revealing its influence on space-frame design and modular architectural forms through shape grammar analysis.

Contribution

It introduces an analytical shape grammar to reconstruct and generate new configurations of the City Tower's tetrahedral and octahedral geometries.

Findings

City Tower's geometry anticipates modern space-frame structures

Tetrahedral and octahedral geometries enable scalable modular designs

Shape grammar can recreate and innovate on the original structure

Abstract

This paper presents a study of computation and morphology of Louis Kahn City Tower project. The City Tower is an unbuilt design by Louis I. Kahn and Anne Tyng that integrates form and structure using 3D space triangular geometries. Although never built, the City Tower geometrical framework anticipated later developments in design of space-frame structures. Initially envisioned in the 1950s, the City Tower project is a skyscraper structure based on a tetrahedral and octahedral space frame called Octet-Truss. The aim of this study is to analyze the geometry of the City Tower structure and how it can be used to develop modular and adaptable architectural forms. The study is based on an analytical shape grammar that is used to recreate the original structure, and later to generate new structural configurations based on the City Tower's morphology. This study also investigates the potential applications of these findings in architecture and reveals the possibilities of using tetrahedrons and octahedrons as fundamental geometries for creating scalable and modular designs and presents initial findings.