Design and Execution of Aluminium Space Frame Advertising Panels and Towers

Space frame modular construction systems are widely employed as a support for advertising panels, mainly for their strength, modularity, and lightness. In recent times, solutions based on aluminium extruded profiles have demonstrated their capability to solve successfully the problem with high corrosion resistance, and low maintenance costs. The space frame systems made with aluminium components allow for a very large set of possible solutions, while unifying the possibility to fix neon filled boxed letters, fabric or solid panels, flags or other advertising devices. Moreover, the system is very light and can be lifted to the building roof and composed without the help of huge cranes and machinery. Very often, the solution of the advertising system atop a commercial centre is defined only few days before the opening of the centre; without designing the centre roof with support points able to resist the very large wind forces that act on the provided panels. In these situations, the capability of the modular systems to adapt their shape and support concept in order to connect the available roof strong points with the panel supporting frame is extremely useful. Therefore, the aluminium modular frame solutions are superior to every other possibility. In this paper, the design of an aluminium space frame is summarized, with reference to a large set of constructed advertising towers and panels. The problem of the evaluation of the wind forces is outlined and useful remarks about the fatigue resistance of aluminium components are drawn. Careful presentation of the design criteria of some outstanding installations gives information about the wide set of problems that these adaptive structures can easily solve.