The newly opened BananaIn concept store in Shanghai’s West Bund features a distinctive ‘Station’ structure positioned at the main entrance. This circular, lightweight installation not only embodies the welcoming spirit advocated by the West Bund but also acts as a visual landmark, drawing attention to the store from all directions. Bespoke was commissioned by RoarCrenew to design the structure and optimize its geometry and cladding. The final result is an elegant and slender form, supported by six articulated columns and stabilized with inclined tension cables.

Bespoke used Karamba3D as the main structure calculation software for this project. During the design process, many iterations were developed with the architects to find the best layout of the columns, the best angles for the inclined cables, and more. Both from a design perspective and for structure optimization Karamba3D enabled the team to get instant feedback from structure calculation results based on the geometry generated from the parametric workflow.

Karamba3D, along with a parametric engineering workflow, enabled the team to fully optimize the structure while ensuring safety and compliance with all requirements of the Chinese Building Code. The use of the “Load Case Combinator” made it possible to efficiently analyze 36 wind load scenarios, accounting for all potential wind directions acting on the structure.