Final Thesis

For my final thesis at school, I made an in-depth structural analysis of Renzo Piano's new building in Spain, Centro Botín in Santander. I have always been passionate about the design, understanding and analysis of structures.

Rendering made with 3ds Max 2018 and V-ray 3.60

Structure model

Perhaps the biggest challenge during this project was recreating and understanding the existing structure. As the building had just been recently completed, the information available on its more technical aspects was rather scarce. Using photographs of the building during construction and a couple of drawings extracted from architectural publications, I was able to produce an accurate model. Intuition and structural knowledge played an important role, as I had to fill the many information gaps.

Simulation

Once the model was finished, loads and forces were applied to simulate and measure the structural tensions. A resulting deflection model of the building is created to help visualize the behaviour of the structure..