Lyons O’Neill’s role on this project has been to develop the system and facilitate the fabrication of a series of doubly curved ceiling panels, covering >2,500m2 of leisure space.

The overall surface of the ceiling geometry is made up of six bays of 182 timber panels, each with a unique geometry. We have made the complex forms buildable by introducing a grillage of bespokely formed ribs behind each surface panel. The panels are each individually supported using simple bracketry onto the curved primary steel frame of the roof.

The geometry for the facing panels, the ribs and their half lapped connections have been created using Grasshopper parametric software for Rhino. These parts have then been exported in a way that they can be CNC’d on a flat bed router.

Once cut out, the design allows the panels to each be intuitively assembled in a relatively low-tech workshop environment. We tested the assembly of these items by printing them out on our 3D printer to make sure we were all happy before being cut in the workshop.

Computational design enabled us to freely adapt the design as the coordination with other disciplines developed, by intelligently updating each of our output drawings, without having to change each drawing individually.

Client	Express Group Ltd