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A Design-to-Fabrication Workflow for Free-Form Timber Structures Using Offcuts

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Computer-Aided Architectural Design. INTERCONNECTIONS: Co-computing Beyond Boundaries (CAAD Futures 2023)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1819))

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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.

Pursued as thesis project and demonstration study at Bauhaus University Weimar.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The offcuts covered in this work exclusively consist of wood from Norway spruce (Picea abies), a softwood with typical anisotropic characteristics [5]. It is the most commonly available tree species to timber manufacturers in the mentioned region.

  2. 2.

    In this work, the three main dimensions of each offcut were measured manually.

  3. 3.

    If the sphere is not close to the start or the end of the curve, there will be two intersection points, of which only the second one is considered.

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Acknowledgements

This research was conducted as a master’s thesis in the framework of the M.Sc. Architecture program at the Bauhaus University Weimar, Germany. It was supported with a Bauhaus Degree Completion Scholarship granted by the university. Offcuts were sponsored by Rettenmeier Holzindustrie Hirschberg GmbH. The authors especially thank Ringo Gunkel, Christian Hanke, Matthias Henkelmann, and Christian Möhwald for their support in the university’s workshops. Special thanks go to Michael Braun, who played an essential role in the installation and testing of the robot system.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Dominik Reisach

  2. Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Bauhaus University Weimar, Weimar, Germany

    Stephan Schütz & Sven Schneider

  3. Faculty of Art and Design, Bauhaus University Weimar, Weimar, Germany

    Jan Willmann

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  1. Dominik Reisach
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  2. Stephan Schütz
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  4. Sven Schneider
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Correspondence to Dominik Reisach .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Michela Turrin

  2. Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Charalampos Andriotis

  3. Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Azarakhsh Rafiee

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Reisach, D., Schütz, S., Willmann, J., Schneider, S. (2023). A Design-to-Fabrication Workflow for Free-Form Timber Structures Using Offcuts. In: Turrin, M., Andriotis, C., Rafiee, A. (eds) Computer-Aided Architectural Design. INTERCONNECTIONS: Co-computing Beyond Boundaries. CAAD Futures 2023. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1819. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37189-9_24

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37189-9_24

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