A Design-to-Fabrication Workflow for Free-Form Timber Structures Using Offcuts
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Date
2023
Publication Type
Conference Paper
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yes
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Abstract
Currently, the timber industry in the European Union incinerates up to 80% of its waste wood, releasing its embodied CO2 into the atmosphere while producing energy. This practice also affects offcuts, a waste material from structural timber production, mostly because of aesthetic imperfections. However, there are potential architectural use cases for this material that extend its lifetime beyond downcycling. Therefore, we propose to employ these offcuts as load-bearing elements of free-form timber structures and present an integral design-to-fabrication workflow suitable for this task. In this paper, we discuss the underlying method in detail, specifically (1) the computational design process to optimally place timber offcuts and to compute wood joints, (2) the transfer of design data into a robotic fabrication process, and (3) the integration of these findings into a unifying design-to-fabrication workflow and its architectural implications. This process minimizes material waste and facilitates the design and buildup of offcuts into structural configurations, including their dis- and reassembly. The resulting timber morphologies consist of non-standard material aggregated under digital guidance, giving them a distinct aesthetic expression. A series of digital experiments demonstrated the capabilities of the conceived method. Finally, we prove the feasibility of the proposed workflow with the design and robotic fabrication of a full-scale Offcut Demonstrator under real-world conditions.
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Publication status
published
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Book title
Computer-Aided Architectural Design. INTERCONNECTIONS: Co-computing Beyond Boundaries.
Journal / series
Volume
1819
Pages / Article No.
361 - 375
Publisher
Springer
Event
20th International Conference on Computer-Aided Architectural Design (CAAD Futures 2023)
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Methods
Software
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Date created
Subject
Waste wood; Upcycling; Circularity; Computational Design; Design-for-Disassembly; Timber Structures; Robotic Fabrication
Organisational unit
09724 - Langenberg, Silke / Langenberg, Silke
02284 - NFS Digitale Fabrikation / NCCR Digital Fabrication