the precise volume and curvature of the outer skin has been designed in a very early phase of the planning process - long before the positions of all the other parts of the building were known. this includes for example the sky openings (the 'nozzles') or the viewing balcony (the 'needle').	and without even knowing what basic principle might be used for construction we began to split up the surface into smaller bits - much like a cartographer would split up the earth into latitudes and longitudes.		the image shows a first step: strips of equal width are being placed along the circumference.