Mike Barnes's legacy: The emergence of form finding and analysis approaches for bending active and elastic gridshell structures

In the late 90's, Michael Barnes was the Head of the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering at Bath University and my Ph.D. advisor. He worked with Chris. J.K. Williams and me on the development of the first three-degree-of-freedom a beam (and later torsion) element, that could be incorporated in non-linear finite difference methods such as dynamic relaxation. This work enabled the form finding and analysis of a new type of structural system, namely active bending structures. Using examples, I demonstrate how this work had and continues to have an impact on 1) research, 2) practice, 3) the design community and 4) teaching. Examples, where Mike's algorithms are at work, include the form finding and analysis of tensegrity bending active arches restrained by membranes, prestressed hooped footbridges (research), the steel/glass gridshell over the courtyard of the Dutch Marine Museum (practice), the initial plug-in Kangaroo for the parametric modeling software Rhinoceros (design community) and student design entries for the IASS 2016 Competition for the Young Generation (teaching). The examples I discuss, show the importance of the questions that Mike asked and solved as well as the impact his findings had on the construction industry, the development of new research domains and design thinking of new generations of architects and engineers.