Its new convention center is a magnificent, green friendly, $ 231 million structure with a roofline that follows a catenary curve where water running off the building's cooling towers glitters by day and, with interior lighting, glows by night.
22.
His solution to the visual problem was to separate the heights of the inner and outer dome to a much greater extent than had been done by Michelangelo at St Peter's, drafting both as catenary curves, rather than as hemispheres.
23.
He had studied geometry thoroughly when he was young, studying numerous articles about engineering, a field that praised the virtues of the catenary curve as a mechanical element, one which at that time, however, was used only in the construction of suspension bridges.
24.
Designed by Rafael Vinoly, the $ 231 million convention center is to have a roof in the shape of a catenary curve; water running off the building's cooling towers will make it glitter by day, and interior lights will set it aglow at night.
25.
Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, developments in mathematics and the study of statics led to a more precise formalization of the ideas of the traditional constructive practices of arches and vaults, and there was a diffusion of studies on the most stable form for these structures : the catenary curve.
