• Part I introduces the topic of shells, tracing the ancient relationship between structural form and forces, the basics of shell behaviour, and the evolution of form-finding and structural optimization techniques.


• Part II familiarizes the reader with form-finding techniques to explore expressive structural geometries, covering the force density method, thrust network analysis, dynamic relaxation and particle-spring systems.


• Part III focuses on shell shape and topology optimization, and provides a deeper understanding of gradient-based methods and meta-heuristic techniques.


• Part IV contains precedent studies of realised shells and gridshells describing their innovative design and construction methods.