Tomás Méndez Echenagucia

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at University of Washington

The majority of decisions in the building design process are taken in the early design stage. This delicate phase presents the greatest opportunity to obtain high performance buildings, but pertinent performance information is needed for designers to be able to deal with multidisciplinary and contrasting objectives. In the present work, an integrat...

Funicular shell structures are usually associated to synclastic shapes, which are concave towards the inside. The use of these shapes as sound reflective ceilings in auditoria is generally avoided as they can cause undesirable sound concentrations. These are the source of acoustical defects, such as echoes and colouration, and tend to have a negati...

A new measurement procedure is proposed to assess the airborne sound insulation of a partition under diffuse sound field excitation using mobility measurements combined with a numerical procedure. The advantage of this hybrid approach is that the diffuse acoustic field does not need to be physically created , thus avoiding problems related to the g...

This paper describes the construction of a thin-shell concrete roof with a novel cable-net and fabric formwork system. The system consists of a fabric shuttering installed on a cable-net structure, which is tensioned from stiff boundary beams supported by standard scaffolding props. The cable-net is made from 2015 uniquely sized cables and rods, co...

This paper describes the design process of a low-frequency sound absorptive panel composed of differently tuned Helmholtz resonators (HRs), considering size and fabrication constraints relevant for applications in the building sector. The paper focuses on cylindrical and spiral resonators with embedded necks that are thin and can achieve high absor...

In the current practice of architectural design, performance analysis is an essential step that involves simulating various design options to identify the most optimal solution. However, the process can be time-consuming, especially when the design space is vast. To address this issue, designers often use optimization algorithms to find the best so...

Background Environmental movements of the late 20th century resulted in sweeping legislation and regulatory actions to reduce the prevalence of diverse pollutants. Although the consequences of noise pollution to public health, environment, and the economy have been recognized over the same time period, noise has received far less policy attention....

Spider webs are multifunctional tools that, besides capturing prey, monitor vibration in the web to localize the prey. Spiders obtain an evolutionary benefit from improving monitoring because better information processing leads to more successful captures, leading to higher chances for survival. Based on this, combined with the costly energy requir...

Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) slabs are becoming more widespread in North American construction in large part because of the environmental advantage of lower embodied carbon when compared to concrete and steel slabs. This advantage is significantly reduced by the use of high embodied carbon layers in the mass timber floor assemblies, such as concret...

Environmental movements of the late 20th century resulted in sweeping legislation and regulatory actions to reduce the prevalence of diverse pollutants. Although the consequences of noise pollution to public health, the environment, and the economy have been recognized over the same time period, noise has received far less policy attention. Corresp...

Despite the growing interest in moisture behavior in buildings, building envelope designs rarely undergo assessment for hygrothermal control, especially when it comes to energy efficiency retrofits. Timber frame structures often incorporate a continuous air cavity that separates the exterior cladding from the wall sheathing. Indeed, using an air ca...

The building envelope has a substantial influence on a building's life cycle operational and embodied carbon emissions. Window-to-wall ratios, wall assemblies, shading and glazing types, have been shown to have a significant impact on total emissions. This paper provides building designers, owners, and policy makers with actionable guidance and a p...

No PDF available ABSTRACT Acoustic absorption of the low to mid-frequency range of human speech (80 to 800 Hz) is important for open office environments and can be achieved with resonant absorbers. However, traditional Helmholtz Resonators (HRs) are not an efficient solution because of the large dimensions required and their limited acoustic perfor...

The Extended Limit Analysis of Reinforced Masonry (ELARM) is a simple and user-friendly method for the design and structural analysis of singly-curved, reinforced tile vaults [1]. It is based on limit analysis but takes into account the reinforcement’s contribution to the composite cross-section’s bending capacity. A three-dimensional approach to E...

Different numerical techniques have been used in the last decades for the acoustic characterization and performance optimization of sound diffusive surfaces. However, these methods require very long calculation times and do not provide a rapid feedback. As a result, these methods can hardly be applied by designers at early stages of the design proc...

No PDF available ABSTRACT This paper describes the design process of a low-frequency sound absorptive panel composed of differently tuned Helmholtz Resonators. Given the size and fabrication constraints relevant for applications in the building sector, we focus on cylindrical and spiral resonators with embedded necks that are space-efficient and ca...

Acoustic panels need to be optimal for both acoustic performance and aesthetic values, in order to respond to the requirements of both architects and acousticians. However, current practice shows that there is a gap in interaction between these professionals. Hence, new strategies in enhancing the efficiency of the design should be investigated. Th...

Floor slabs represent a high percentage of the embedded energy in buildings. Lightweight floor systems, such as funicular shell structures, represent an important approach to the reduction of embedded energy in building by reducing material use in a significant way. As the amount of material is reduced, the sound insulation capabilities need to be...

A large amount of the embedded energy of buildings is due to their structures. Consequently, designers have been developing lighter and material efficient structures. However, lightweight structures are vulnerable to aerial and structure-borne noise transmission, especially for the lower frequencies. Sound insulation from environmental noise or foo...

This paper describes the development of an unreinforced, freeform vault consisting of 399 discrete limestone blocks with thicknesses ranging from 5 to 12 cm. The vault covers an area of 75 m2 and spans more than 15 m in pure compression, without mortar between the blocks. We discuss how the design of the vault and its individual pieces was entirely...

The IdeasCity festival, regularly organized in several US cities by New York's New Museum, took place in New York itself in May 2015. lt's aim is to connect design, arts, and culture with an exploration of the current phenomena of life in cities. For this occasion, teachers and students at ETH Zurich designed a 90 m2 pavilion made from recycled bev...

This paper presents a design and construction experience which has been developed inside the Computational Morphogenesis, a master workshop, at the School of Architecture of Politecnico di Torino. In 2013 the program of the workshop concentrated on the design and construction of a free-form brick vault by means of digital tools and interactive meth...

Building shapes throughout history have been created with architectural, structural and other purposes in mind. Form can be embedded with technical knowledge that complement the architectural and esthetic aspects of buildings and enrich their design. Shells in particular have a long tradition of being structurally sound as well as architecturally s...

The objective of this PhD research is to investigate how best to use computational search processes in the early phase of design. Search algorithms are implemented in combination with parametric models of different kinds of geometry, with the purpose of studying various building performances. The early phase of design and the nature of the design p...

Acoustical Indexes as described in ISO3382-1 ¹ , with their optimal values, are not necessarily positively correlated. Some of them are in fact negatively correlated ² . This means that when designers try to shape a room in such a way as to obtain optimal EDT and C 80 values for a certain position in the room, they face contrasting objectives. This...

Focusing on the issues of sound propagation in a free field condition and on the concept of uniform sound energy in an outdoor performance environment, our research aimed to develop a computer-aided process for the generation of reflective acoustic surfaces to be used as concert-shells, a computational design tool for acoustic form-finding. The pro...

This paper discusses the application of a Multi Objective Search method to the design of shell structures. Contrasting objectives of light weight and high stiffness are consid-ered for two case studies with different geometry and constraints. The multiobjective search is performed in the frame of the Pareto theory of non domination, implemented in...

Architects are used to having a high level of control in the early design phase. However, in this initial stage of design the most important formal and acoustic decisions are made. The need for good communication between architect and acoustician is therefore highest in this stage of the process. The advent of advanced computational geometry, in pa...

Acoustical Indexes as described in ISO3382-1 1 , with their optimal values, are not necessarily positively correlated. Some of them are in fact negatively correlated 2 . This means that when designers try to shape a room in such a way as to obtain optimal EDT and C80 values for a certain position in the room, they face contrasting objectives. This...

For my final thesis I decided to study the vast potential of surface structures in the field of architecture. I had the idea to create a surface that would not only act as a load bearing roof of a concert hall with a large clear span, but also, this surface was to serve as the main acoustic ceiling in this concert hall. This was the main idea, to h...

In this paper a computational morphogenesis process is applied to the design and the optimization of the shell roof of a large music hall. The architectural concept is based on the folded plate technique: a set of reinforced concrete plates, connected to each other on the edges, forms the global shape of the roof. The dimensions of each plate are d...