Santa Maria del Pianto
Fred Labbé - Expedition Engineering


Expedition Engineering have been designing with Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners a 2,300m2 honeycomb canopy roof for the new Santa Maria del Pianto underground station in Naples. The arrangement of the honeycomb structure, which will be made of 2,700 vertical steel plate elements, has been optimised using a genetic algorithm to maximise daylight penetration in the station shaft, provide some degree of shading on the lift platform at ground level and be structurally efficient.

Evolutionary algorithms operate on a ‘population’ of possible solutions and apply the principle of survival of the fittest, generation after generation. This technique has been successfully applied to drive the ordering of the roof elements as a response to a set of often conflicting objectives. Each steel plate element will be plasma cut from digital information, which makes the resulting design build-able and affordable.

All scripting was done in VB.NET. The script included parameterisation of the design, a sunlight assessment module and integration with a structural analysis software