Quickview of the lookout

Just finished a really rough model of the walkway/lookout.  The biggest thing I noticed when modeling this is that I've spent too much time designing this in section, so it was good to try 3d.  A few notes about the images below: First of all, yes they're very rough.  The vertical(ish) steel armatures (in the electrical relay sense not the plaster sense) would be a plasma cut plate with a surrounding edge plate, so far I've only modeled the edge plate part but it's obvious there the cut plate would be.  The rotating/sliding connections would be circular HSS cuffs around smaller HSS tubes.  Colours: Black- canvas/other membrane material, Green- wood walkway surface, Red- fixed halves of the armatures, Blue- active armatures, Purple- HSS curved truss system, Teal- Ocean, Grey- terrain (note: extremely abstracted for preliminary modeling)  What's not here: well, lots, but mostly I have only modeled the downward pulling armatures.  They will be contrasted with upwards pushing armatures.  Each of the active armatures acts beween and opposite each other and between the fixed points (Red).

Plan 

Elevation, not very descriptive yet.

Side elevation (note: the person hiding in there for scale)

Here you can best see the lower membrane that provides the driving force for the active armatures

Finally, here's the section showing the downward pulling armature.  The wind is acting from the right, which is translated to a vertical motion on the other side of the walkway via two rotating connections and a sliding element.  The grey lines represent the other end of the range of motion.

Next up, I'm going to work out the other armature.  Designing the movement for these things is a lot harder than I thought it would be because I'm working on the assumption that the membrane (the top grey line in the image above) will not stretch within the plane of the section.  This, coupled with the translation of a circular motion to a vertical (mostly) linear movement is a tricky operation.
The other thing I'm planning on doing is putting all of this is in Grasshopper to parametize and simplify a few elements including the lengthwise  triangulation of the truss.  I also may include parameters to change the shape and angle of the walkway itself.  Finally I will be adding parameters to show the displacements of the armatures and the membranes to simulate the effects of the wind.

My geo lecture is done in a few minutes so I'd better finish up this post.

J

PS: I'm thinking that the walkway will have to widen at the center point (in plan) to provide a better lookout platform condition.  This would necessitate the creation of different armatures to allow for the extra cross-sectional width.