Das Prinzip Leichtbau und seine Bedeutung für das konstruktive Entwerfen

The Lightweight principle and its relevance for the structural design.

Jörg Schlaich is fully committed to an integrated and holistic approach of construction engineering. The 'Lightweight principle' is the main guideline of his designs. Lightweight construction is not simply practiced for the sake of itself, but it rather possesses a social, ecological and cultural relevance in his work. It is socially representative because slender structures add value to design and construction, ecologically significant as a reduction of material usage saves non-renewable resources, and culturally relevant because a force flow adapted form follows timeless design principles. His considering himself a cultural responsible engineer is deeply rooted in the history of engineering. Many of his design ideas reach back to concepts of great predecessors, but reinterpret them completely anew and transfer them to contemporary constructions of utmost elegance.
How are the contributions of Jörg Schlaich to lightweight construction elaborated by others today, which further developments are motivated by them and which discussions do they trigger? As representatives for the many colleagues that received their formative inspiration and stimuli from Jörg Schlaich and his environment, we would like to discuss these questions on the basis of some of our own projects.