In the context of the AIA Conference on Architecture 2019, Craig Schwitter, engineer and partner at BuroHappold Engineering, told with ArchDaily about the structural challenge behind Safdie Architects’ latest Jewel Changi Airport and other technology-related topics around architecture:
Jewel is a project along the way of a whole series of grid cells that our firm have done and have been increasingly about experience and space underneath these massive roofs, and I think Jewel has really moved into the next level. These structures are not structures really, they are filters. They are balancing an exterior climate and interior climate; they are trying to make a space, you know, habitable, enjoyable. […] But we couldn’t have done that 10 years ago, because the technology that makes that possible is a culmination of the advances in computer-aided manufacturing.