Timber gridshells have the potential to be a sustainable and cost-effective solution for long-span applications and free-form architecture. Despite this, their overall use has been limited, and there is a lack of research focusing on their construction materials. This literature review aims to investigate timber gridshells and their construction materials to identify the criteria used in selecting suitable materials for gridshell applications. A review of peerreviewed scientific articles, books, and theses was conducted to gather information on timber gridshells, construction materials used in gridshells, timber used in active bending structures, and building standards. The research findings identified six main factors that are important when selecting a suitable material for timber gridshell application: structural strength and strength grading, bending strength and behaviour, bending strength/bending elasticity ratio, durability, commercial availability, and cost. These findings are also discussed to identify the characteristics that make a material suitable for timber gridshell applications, depending on the gridshell’s context, whether in a tropical or international context. This review serves as a necessary reference for architects and engineers when selecting materials for their timber gridshell projects, providing insight into the selection criteria for construction materials and sharing information on the material properties of suitable timber gridshell materials.

Keywords : Timber gridshell; construction material; material selection; selection criteria.

Wind energy is one of the renewable energy resources that is gaining attention from industry players and researchers. In the last few years, there is an increasing interest in small-scale wind turbines as a power generator in built environments as the urgency to reduce carbon footprint in urban areas increases as well as reducing adverse effects of fossil fuels on human health and the environment. Generally, wind turbines can be categorized into two categories which are horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWTs) and vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs). VAWTs have good potentials to be developed considering their suitability to be used in complex wind conditions associated with built environments. However, the number of research, publications, as well as basic understanding of flow phenomena associated to the performance of VAWTs such as dynamic stall, flow separation, flow curvature effect and blade-wake interaction are scarce. These flow phenomena are attributed by operational and geometrical parameters that significantly affect the overall performance of VAWTs that includes turbine power generation and aerodynamic characteristics. This paper provides a review and discussion of the effects of various design parameters such as blade profile, blade pitch angle and turbine solidity on the performance of VAWTs and serves as a basic guideline to the designer in designing an ideal VAWT

Keywords: Optimization; design parameter; vertical axis wind turbine; wind energy; renewable energy