My name is Gregor Horstmeyer and I am senior in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University. My focus is on Structures, while pursuing certificates in both Environmental Studies and the Program in Sustainable Energy. My senior thesis explores the structural and constructional feasibility of a glass umbrella. Inspiration for my project came from Felix Candela’s hyperbolic surfaces along with glass’s fascinating material properties. Having spent seven years working with glass as medium in art has stimulated me to incorporate glass into my study of structures. I hope to show through the construction of a scale model, strength and safety testing, and numerical modeling that utilizing the compressive strength of glass in an efficient design can help create an elegant and unique structural element.
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The thesis quintessentially Princeton:
