Distinguished Member Horst Berger died in May 2019. Because no obituary was published, the IASS has only belatedly learned of Berger's passing. He was a well known contributor to the field of long-span tension and membrane structures, including the Hajj Terminal in Saudi Arabia and the roof the the Denver International Airport. His Wikipedia page is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Berger. A memorial statement will appear in a future issue of the Journal of the IASS.

The IASS is sad to announce the death of IASS Honorary Member Tien T. Lan at age  95 as communicated by Prof. Su-Duo Xue.

Professor Lan founded China Association for Spatial Structures. He devoted his life to the scientific research and engineering practice of spatial structures.  He made a remarkable contribution to the development of China's spatial structures.  He has also played an important role in academic exchanges of spatial structures between China and the IASS. 

For IASS members, access to the PDF of the full issue is through the Publications Gateway of this website. The issue will be available soon on the Ingenta website in the usual form.

The Organizing Committee of the IASS/APCS 2022 Symposium have posted the videos of the plenary sessions online on the symposium website at http://www.iass2022.org.cn/Video.html. These include the 18 plenary lectures and the 4 Hangai Prize lectures as well as the opening ceremony, the IASS Technical Activities session, the IASS Award conferral session, the IASS Future Events session, and the closing ceremony. No login is necessary, so these videos are available until 31 December 2022 for any interested person to view.

Working Group 3

The IASS Executive Council approved the change of the name of WG 3 from “Technical Expert Group on Cooling and Solar Updraft Towers” to “Technical Expert Group on Shell Structures for Energy Supply” at the meeting held online on Sept. 16, 2022. Prof. Arndt Goldack (University of Wuppertal, Germany) and Prof. Lin Zhao (Tongji University Shanghai, China) have been appointed co-chairs of the group.

Working Group 5

The change of name of WG 5 from “Concrete Shell Roofs” to “Continuous Shells” was also approved at the EC meeting. Prof. Stefano Gabriele (Roma Tre University, Italy) has been appointed co-chair of this group.

At the Awards Conferral Ceremony of the 2022 Annual Symposium, the 2021 Tsuboi Awards were conferred to the following winners:

For the best Journal paper of 2021, Mario SEIXAS, Luís EUSTA QUIO MOREIRA, Patrick STOFFEL, Joao BINA, “Form Finding and Analysis of an Active Bending-Pantographic Bamboo Space Structure,” Journal of the IASS, Vol. 62 (2021) No. 3 September n. 209, pp. 206-222.

For the best Proceedings paper for 2021: Christopher ROBELLER, Eduardo DE OLIVEIRA BARATA, Enrico Valentino TAGLIABOSCHI, Felix SCHMIDT-KLEESPIES, “HexBox Canopy: a segmented timber plate shell with hardwood wedge joints,” Proceedings of the 2020/21 IASS Symposium, Guilford, UK, Paper 646.

The best Proceedings paper will be published in the December 2022 issue of the Journal of the IASS.

At the Awards Conferral Ceremony of the 2022 Annual Symposium, the 20th Hangai Prizes were conferred to the following winners, who all later presented their papers at the symposium:

• Kazuki HAYASHI (Japan): "Assembly sequence optimization of spatial trusses using graph embedding and reinforcement learning"
• Yao LU (USA): "A Method for Designing Multi-layer Sheet-Based Lightweight Funicular Structures"
• Jiaming MA (Australia): "PrintNervi – Design and construction of a ribbed floor system in the digital era"
• Kanata WARISAYA  (Japan): "Freeform auxetic mechanisms based on corner-connected tiles"

Their papers will not only appear in the Proceedings of the 2022 Symposium but will also be published in the December 2022 issue of the Journal of the IASS.

At the annual meeting of the IASS Executive Council held in virtual form on 16 September 2022, the following honors were approved and announced for conferral at the 2023 Annual Symposium in Melbourne, Australia:

Eduardo Torroja Medal for Matsuro SASAKI (Japan)

IASS Honorary Membership for Michael Valentin BALZ (Germany)

IASS Isler Prize for Janet ECHELMAN (USA)

At the IASS Executive Council meeting held in virtual form on 16 September 2022, the following officers were elected for three-year terms:

• Ken'ichi KAWAGUCHI re-elected as Vice President
• Makoto OHSAKI re-elected as Treasurer

In addition, Susana FERNÁNDEZ was named to replace Beatriz MATEO as Secretary of the Association. The Executive Council expressed its gratitude to Beatriz for her valuable efforts while in office for seven years.

The annual Executive Council meeting was held this year in virtual form on 16 September 2022, just a few days before the Annual Symposium.

The Executive Council approved the results of the annual election for renewal of one third of the IASS Executive Council were elected for 3-year terms:

• Charis GANTES (previously co-opted)
• Ken'ichi KAWAGUCHI(re-elected)
• Carlos LÁZARO (re-elected)
• Makoto OHSAKI (re-elected)
• Ruy Marcelo de Oliveira PAULETTI (re-elected)
• Sergio PELLEGRINO (re-elected)

In addition, at the meeting, the ED co-opted the following to 3-year terms:

• Caitlin MUELLER (previously elected)
• Mogens NIELSEN (re-co-opted)

And the former EC member Andras FALK was elected to the Advisory Board.