• performance-based
• Parametric
• High-rise
• Grasshopper
• Evolutionary solvers
• Skyscraper
• CFD
• Wind Energy

The design process of a skyscraper, or rather one of the most fascinating duty in which an architect or an engineer can be involved, has always been subordinated to the progress in the technic; where technic is intended as the ensemble of scientific knowledge, materials exploitations, technologic solutions, etc., required in the building up of a tower. In the recent times, the remarkable support offered by modern computers has improved the analytical power, causing a significant spreading of possibilities. This thesis has been built on the investigation and the consequential optimization of some of these new possibilities, through the specific study of energy-producing systems building implementation and evolutionary solvers-based structural design.
The glue of this modern manifesto has been entrusted to the biomimetic approach, in order to reaffirm the central role of the nature into a context, the skyscraper, which intrinsically represents the affirmation of the human supremacy over the natural forces.
The entire work has been developed through an extended series of iterative processes characterized by an equivalent hierarchic level, with the consequential request of a direct and automatic connection between all the phases of the project. Grasshopper, through its parametric modelling, has excellently epitomized this connection, producing a chain of entangled algorithms able to define and successively manage each building component after the introduction of certain boundary conditions.
In detail, this work has been focused on three specific aspects of the design. As first, the morphogenesis stage has been investigated, with the effective application of biomimetic principles in regard to the architectural and structural conception, and performance-based considerations, in the form of CFD analyses, for what has concerned the implementation of a wind-turbines system. Then, the structural field has been examined through the design and the resultant verification of vertical resisting system, composed of concrete core, a steel diagrid and seven horizontal stiffening rings. As last, a statistic estimation of the wind-turbines energetic production has been elapsed.