Víctor Ramírez Arquitectura

30/10/2025

The entrance roof at the «Club Astronómico de Santiago» (), my first built work of architecture, will be featured at the IASS 2025 Symposium (.structures) in a scientific paper titled “Design, construction and analysis of a ferrocement hyperbolic paraboloid shell with curved tubular edges”.

I will present this paper for proving how, after being completed in 2018 and having resisted the impact of hurricanes and earthquakes for more than seven years, this structure provides a relevant example of how hyperbolic paraboloid shells can be efficiently built with alternative constructive systems in our current times. Additionally, the presentation will cover the antecedents, architectural aspects and astronomical symbolism of the roof, while at the same time showing details of all the stages of its construction and evaluating its stability and resistance through structural analysis.

I consider myself very fortunate of presenting this project in a country that has a very special place in my heart; and more specifically, in its homonymous beautiful capital: Mexico City. There is no better place in the world for exchanging ideas about hyperbolic paraboloid shells, since Mexico City is the cradle of this kind of structures, thanks to the impressive and prolific career that was developed here by one of my favorite architects and engineers… “The father of hyperbolic paraboloid shells”: Félix Candela.

Being hosted this year by the UNAM Architecture Faculty (), the IASS Symposium has provided once again a wonderful opportunity for reencountering with many old friends from the international shell structures community, for visiting several of Félix Candela’s masterpieces, an for having the honor of meeting in person with some of the world’s most important actors of this field.

Special thanks go to Dirk and Hinrich Münzner (managing directors of .bollberatenundplanen) for having supported my participation in this symposium for the second year in a row, and also to Jesús Pérez (co-author) and Eduardo Abreu (.abreu17) for contributing the paper’s structural simulations.

See you tomorrow at !

05/10/2025

2025 marks the 10th anniversary of my personal brand as an architect, “Víctor Ramírez Arquitectura”. Ten years ago (more precisely, on July 15th, 2015), began a long journey that has spanned seven countries: from my native Dominican Republic in the Caribbean, to having my work being showcased (in person or virtually) in places as far as Mexico or Australia, until reaching Germany and Europe, where I now live.

Initially intended to serve merely as a means for advertising my services as an architecture student, over the years “Víctor Ramírez Arquitectura” became the medium through which I portray my scientific research and professional work in the fields of “computational design, structural architecture and experimental construction”.

This was achieved thanks to a continuous use of the brand for over a decade, by being open to expand its application beyond its initial advertising purpose, and also by being always committed to employ it in every new project that came up along the way.

To commemorate this occasion, I have created this timeline with a selection of my most important works from the past ten years. More details of each one of them will be shared on my stories in the next days, and afterwards, new future projects will be announced in the upcoming weeks.

“A Journey of Ten Years” has finished… While at the same time, a new one is just getting started!

03/01/2025

IASS 2024 Symposium – Zurich city

Photo order:

1–2: Opera House (Ferdinand Fellner and Hermann Helmer, 1891)

3–4: Limmat river and its surroundings (façade of the «Grossmünster» church and spire of the «Fraumünster» church), near the river’s origin from Lake Zurich

5–6: views from the top of the «Grossmünster» towers

7: «Augustinergasse» alley

8–10: Stadelhofen station (, 1990)

11–14: Library of the University of Zurich’s Law Faculty (, 2004)

15–16: views of Lake Zurich from the “Lake Side” restaurant (Roland Rohn, 1967)

17: residential high-rise in Affoltern of brutalist and modern style, raised above pilotis of variable cross-section (1970)

18: Pavillon Le Corbusier (Le Corbusier, 1967)

19: Surroundings of the «Uraniastrasse» street and tower of the «Urania-Sternwarte» astronomical observatory, Zurich’s first building made of reinforced concrete (Gustav Gull, 1907)

20: Zurich Main Station (Jakob Friedrich Wanner, 1871)

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07/12/2024

IASS 2024 Symposium – Concrete innovation

In the last day of the event, attendees were given the opportunity to participate in several technical tours. In my case, I was able to join the “Concrete Innovation Tour”, in which the work of , and , among others, was showcased at the “NEST” (Next Evolution in Sustainable Building Technologies) building of .

In particular, I had always wanted to see in person the shell roof and floor slabs of NEST's “HiLo” (High Performance – Low Emissions) unit. From far away, its doubly-curved thin shell roof exhibits a soft, padded pattern on its interior surface that follows the grid of the cable net that was used to support the unhardened concrete; from up close, this changes to a coarse texture left by the flexible fabric that was used as a substitute for traditional formwork materials.

Conversely, the rib-stiffened funicular floor slabs were my favorite building element of the HiLo unit, since they offer a glimpse on how computational design and experimental construction can lead to industry solutions that could be mass-produced and commercialized successfully. And in the end, standing under building-scale prototypes of slabs with stress-aligned ribs (fabricated with current technologies) was an inspiration to continue developing the topic of my master thesis.

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12/11/2024

IASS 2024 Symposium – Model exhibition

I also had the privilege of displaying a scale model of my master thesis at the “Show, Touch and Tell” exhibition organized by the IASSʼs “Working Group 15: Structural Morphology”.

As expected, large gatherings like this symposium enable important reencounters. In my case, after seven years since our last meeting, I was glad to see again my old friend Juan Ignacio del Cueto (Director of the UNAM Architecture Faculty, expert in the works of Félix Candela, and also head of next yearʼs symposium in Mexico City), with whom I have collaborated in the field of thin shell concrete structures.

Lastly, it was also great to meet in person (and also to have my model being displayed next to the amazing works of) (creator of ), researchers of universities from all around the world, and several members of the team.

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27/10/2024

IASS 2024 Symposium – Paper presentation

In the final days of August I participated for the first time at the annual symposium of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (.structures).

It was a great honor being able to present my master thesis to renowned figures in the field, such as Bill Baker (structural engineer of the Burj Khalifa and partner at ), Carlos Lázaro (President of the IASS), Clemens Preisinger (main developer of ), (main developer of .tech) or .senatore (Head of Adaptive Structures at ILEK Uni-Stuttgart), among other spectators.

The presentation formed part of the IASSʼs “Working Group 13: Computational Methods” session, and its full paper will also be included in the symposiumʼs proceedings.

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26/08/2024

My thesis for the Construction Robotics M.Sc. program of has been published as a scientific paper at the 2024 IASS Symposium. The IASS (International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures; .structures) was founded in 1959, and is one of the oldest international institutions focusing on structural design. For more than six decades, renown architects and engineers such as Eduardo Torroja, Félix Candela, Heinz Isler, Jörg Schlaich or Frei Otto have contributed to the development of the association, and since 1989, students and professionals from all around the world have gathered in its annual symposia.

I feel very fortunate of being part of this legacy event, by sharing my latest research at this year’s edition at . Here, I will present a summary of my master thesis with the title “Slabs with stress-aligned ribs: computational validation of their structural efficiency”. Additionally, the thesisʼ scale model will be featured in a special “Show, Touch and Tell” exhibition.

For all of the above, I would like to thank Dirk and Hinrich Münzner (managing directors of ) for supporting my participation, and Prof. Martin Trautz, and of for their advice and supervision.

The full paper can be downloaded here:https://app.iass2024.org/files/IASS_2024_Paper_526.pdf
See you this week at !

27/11/2023

“Computational Validation of the Structural Efficiency of Slabs with Stress-Aligned Ribs” – Master Thesis

Final colloquium models

A pair of 3D printed scale models was created to illustrate two distinct aspects of the master thesis. The first one, titled “Two-way square slabs with polylinear stress-aligned ribs”, showed the stress lines patterns of slabs with corner or edge supports, and thanks to a warm light glowing underneath them, the geometry of their ribs was highlighted with a dramatic translucency effect. The slabs became thicker near their supports in order to represent how, as real building elements, they would adapt to the high stress concentrations that occur in these regions. This thickening is visible as the parts of the slabs that do not allow the passage of light. Lastly, in order to easily differentiate the ribs that followed the 1st principal stress directions from those following the 2nd principal stress directions, the rib height of the former was larger than that of the latter, and drawings were placed below the slabs in which the former were portrayed as continuous lines, and the latter as dashed lines. The drawings included symbols to represent the support conditions, along with technical data from the structural simulations.

On the other hand, the second model showcased a “Catalog of stress lines patterns for two-way rectangular slabs with linear supports”, in order to visualize how the stress lines are influenced by non-uniform support conditions; this was done by applying the nine different cases described in the “Tabellen zur Tragwerklehre” handbook written by F. Krauss, W. Führer, and T. Jürges. The slabs and the drawings below them employ the same symbolism and legend of the first model regarding the rib heights, the principal stress lines and the support conditions. Finally, both models were designed as interactive exhibition artifacts: the lights of the first model could be turned on by the spectators with the press of a switch button, and all the slabs could be easily removed in order to allow for a closer inspection, thus generating a tactile, visual and didactic experience.

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27/11/2023

29/10/2023

“Computational Validation of the Structural Efficiency of Slabs with Stress-Aligned Ribs” – Master Thesis

Final colloquium posters (high resolution versions available here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1bY_0EgyNZPTOff9_-ZslZalOSGEwtGK9)

ABSTRACT
Ribbed slabs are generally considered to be more structurally efficient than solid or flat slabs (i.e., they achieve equal strength with less material), as proven by several scientific papers and the built examples of slabs supported by a grid of straight ribs. A special type of ribbed slabs are slabs with stress-aligned ribs: they were sparsely built in the 20th century, but have regained popularity in academic and industrial research due to the advent of computational design and digital fabrication, as evidenced in recent experimental projects.
After reviewing historical and recent examples of slabs with stress-aligned ribs, this thesis shows that, in most scientific literature, their structural efficiency has only been benchmarked against that of solid slabs — a questionable comparison, since any kind of ribbed slabs will have well-known structural advantages over solid slabs. A more relevant approach would be to compare the structural efficiency of stress-aligned ribs to that of straight ribs, but few or no research has been made in this regard.
In order to determine which ribbed slab variant is more efficient, a series of simulations were performed using computational design and structural analysis software, modeling the slabs’ plates and ribs as thin shell elements made of steel. The results proved that slabs with stress-aligned ribs could achieve a significant weight reduction by decreasing their rib thickness and equalizing their internal elastic energy. The breakthrough of this research lies in demonstrating the potential of this kind of slabs, and how they could have a meaningful impact in the construction industry in terms of material and cost savings.

KEYWORDS
Ribbed slabs; Stress-aligned ribs; Isostatic ribs; Principal stress lines; Structural analysis; Computational design

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