Pier Luigi Nervi designed and built the Palazzetto Dello Sport (small sports complex) in 1957 for the 1960 Olympics in Rome. I’ve visited this building several times making hand drawn sketches each visit. I thought about making a 3D model but to be honest I was a bit frightened. My fear disappeared once I started using Grasshopper and I realized it would actually be fairly easy to build a parametric model of it. This exercise made me realize how lucky we are to have these tools today and how brilliant some past Architects were without these tools. I also think it’s a great tool to help better understand the principals and ideas behind these structures and forms of the past. I hope you enjoy this tutorial as much as I did making it.

This video tutorial will look at creating a parametric model of the Palazzetto Dello Sport (small sports complex).

Topics Covered:
Circle, Move, Z Vector, Endpoint, 3 Point Arc, Sweep 1, Divide Domain 2, Isotrim (subsrf), Divide Curve, Brep Components (explode), Rotate, Polar Array, Radians, Group (ctrl-g)