ARCH 655
Student: Pengyu Liao
Instructor: Wei Yan

0, Introduction

The Canton Tower - 广州塔

The Guangzhou Tower (广州电视观光塔) is one of the world′s most spectacular new buildings. It is not only the world′s tallest TV tower (600m), beating Toronto′s CN-tower (553m), but also a surprisingly beautiful structure.

Mark Hemel, the IBA architect that together with his partner Barbara Kuit designed the Guangzhou TV tower, comments, ″Where most skyscrapers bear ′male′ features; being introvert, strong, straight, rectangular, and based on repetition, we wanted to create a ′female′ tower being complex, transparent, curvy and gracious.″ ″Our aim was to design a free-form tower with a rich and human-like identity that would represent Guangzhou as a dynamic and exciting city. We therefore wanted it to be non-symmetrical so that the building would look as if ′in movement′ and ′alive′. The result is a tower like a ′sexy female′, the very reason that earned her the nickname: ′Xiao Man Yao′.″ which means "young girl with tight waist"

1, Generating Process of the Canton Tower

1, Define the basement ellipse, middle ellipse and the top slop ellipse first.

2, Then merge three of them and loft it to make the body shape.

3, Follow the top slop plan to find slop plans on every floor to make a intersection with the main body to find the circle.

4, Offset and pipe the circle to have the slop pipes.

5, Divide the slop circle in 24 part, use the interpolate curve to connect the point on different level and loft them to have pipe in another direction.

6, In the same way to connect the vertical point and loft them to have the vertical pipe.

7, Use the horizontal plan to make a intersection with the main body to have the level circle. Then use the boundary surface and extrude to have the panel of the building.

8, Define a ellipse and extrude it to be a core of the building.

9, At the top floor, define a polygon use the extrude to point to make a tip of the building, then find different point to extrude the small polygon plate on the tips.

2, Creating a Parametric, Physical-based Model
Using the Uforce to simulate the wind force on the building. The diagonal pipe and the central core will give building very good protection of the deformation.