KRG Pavalam Palace, located in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, India, is a multifunctional venue designed to accommodate weddings, receptions, and a wide range of cultural events. The project represents a significant milestone in the application of advanced architectural research at a large scale. It consolidates insights from extensive academic and experimental work, integrating key principles such as structural geometry, funicular form development, material efficiency, computational design, streamlined fabrication strategies, and construction methodologies that minimize formwork and shuttering. The project also demonstrates how these technical approaches can be effectively implemented in collaboration with local labor, aligning contemporary structural and computational techniques with regional cultural practices and building traditions.

For the KRG Pavalam Palace project, Karamba3D was integrated from the earliest conceptual stages to support extensive form-finding studies for the long-span vaulted roof system. Informed by a decade of demonstrator research, an active-bending analogue and computational workflow was employed to evaluate how variations in structural geometry, spatial requirements, rainwater management, and construction constraints influenced the development of the roof’s form. Karamba3D facilitated detailed analyses of force distribution, principal stress lines, and internal force trajectories, which directly informed the conceptual structural strategy. By examining these stress-line networks, idealised paths of material continuity, the design team was able to optimise reinforcement placement and reduce material usage while ensuring structural performance and stability.

Alongside Karamba3D, additional computational strategies for form-finding and fabrication logic were employed to integrate structural, construction, and architectural objectives rather than optimise for a single parameter. This holistic approach enabled the 25-metre-span vaults to develop from a rigorously informed relationship between form, force flow, material behaviour, and construction methodology. The resulting system is materially efficient, eliminates the need for shuttering, and can be executed using local labour while at the same time remaining both culturally grounded and environmentally responsive.