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In most houses/small-buildings, the levels are directly supported by the walls, and by columns that rise from the bottom-most level.
The exoskeletal house, the floors dangle by wires from the peak of the roof.
Plenty of advantages...
- lighter weight than columnar construction
- insulation
layer almost completely uncompromised (think Dewar/Thermos)
- uncluttered by internal structural columns
- cheaper (a bit)
- easier to renovate
Construction can be as simple as columns replacement by cables (steel is much stronger under tension than compression), or more complex, featuring thin wires that run through room dividers (which allows for lighter weight floor beams).
The house doesn't have to be blatantly exoskelatal : while the structure leans much more towards external load-bearing columns and less distributed-load framing, cladding can be fixed to either side.
A bit of design creativity and the wires can be played as a harp, through the open walls.
[link]
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Four steel columns marking the corners if the property. |
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Four crossbeams, forming a cube (along with the concrete raft pad). |
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Modules suspended by tensile cables to their corners. |
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Modules can be added/removed/exchanged, or rearranged depending on seasonal or other requirements. |
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Multi storey structures with mobile home type lightweight construction. |
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Raise assembly in case of flooding; lower in high winds. |
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Flying buttresses anywhere? |
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nope, not as imagined anyways : the ^ is also cabled together at the bottom, to keep it from turning into a -- . |
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//pompidou centre// At first glance the wall construction is a uniformly distributed load; it's "simply" had the cladding removed, exposing the innards. |
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This construction the loading tends more towards discrete external columns. Imagined for a modest 2-storey dwelling would be 4 iterations of a solidly welded upright+peak+upright, of say 6" box tubing, planted 8 feet apart. Hang the floor assemblies from the peak girders with cable or wires, apply roof, cladding (doors, windows, plumbing, insulation, etc), done. |
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//[In] The exoskeletal house, the floors dangle by wires from the peak of the roof.// |
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But what do we hang the roof from? |
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Yeah, I know, "external load-bearing columns"... but why not load the columns with the floors directly?
Unless you instead use an internal load-bearing column at the centre of gravity, your column/roof complex will have a non-vertical force component to deal with. |
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//why not load the columns with the floors directly?// The original idea was to minimize heat transfer. |
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Normal house, take a look and it's beams resting on brick with insulation piled around. Heat just walks right in and out, pretty much. |
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If you build it as a house within a house, the internal shell needs support. Wire under tension conducts much less heat than legs under compression, for the same strength requirement. And, as long as we're going there, it takes up much less room as well, internally. |
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//non-vertical force component// Wires hanging off the peak girders ^ impart a horizontal component to the peak... which is easily mitigated by a wire connecting one side to the other _ . It's like any bridge framework though - feel free to add trusses etc. Make it a something-bola (para, hyper, etc) though "cheap" isn't the phrase that comes to mind, there. |
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Other than that it's vertical only. Bear in mind I"m thinking steel construction, not wood (or cement), for all load-bearing components. |
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If you build a big enough yoke, you could suspend houses in the US from it, and more houses in China from it, and they'd balance eachother out. |
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ok, somebody had to mention it: exoskeletal -> geodesic dome. |
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That said, your solution where wires support things might have some kind of resonant earthquake difficulty, but that only affects some regions. |
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It seems to me a structure with flexibility, automatic counterweighting, and reliant on tensile strength would be much more earthquake resistant. |
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//geodesic dome// ah, true, however in the usual designs for such, the innards are still supported from the ground : the framework of the dome only supports the dome. |
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// earthquake difficulty // |
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Actually I think it would perform better to protect occupants. |
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F'rinstance if there was say a foot of relatively squishy insulation between the shells, then a mild earthquake would shake the outer shell but only wobble the inner shell. A strong earthquake might warp the outer shell, leaving the inner shell relatively intact. |
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Still a pain to fix of course. |
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