Project details

Automating everything

Before Programming Architecture was founded, Dr. Milos Dimcic worked at the Knippers Helbig office and he used the available tools to generate the grid geometry of the IOP roof.

The Institute of Peace building in Washington D.C. was designed by Moshe Safdie Architects, while Seelle GmbH was responsible for the realization of the roof structure. They subcontracted the Knippers Helbig office to find an appropriate grid solution, and, working for them (before Programming Architecture was founded), Dr. Milos Dimcic came up with the present geometry of the grid shell structure.

Although the roof appears to be a free form, the shape is a combination of torus and sphere cut-outs. Therefore the grid was designed in such a way that it has as much identical structural members and glass panels as possible. Due to the regular geometry of the shape it was easy to design a quadrangular grid with planar quads.