Beyond Form Definition: Material Informed Digital Fabrication in Timber Construction

This paper introduces a series of prototypes investigating a new architectural language in wood that is driven by a critical approach to recent technical developments in design, fabrication and material. Although wood is slowly being recognized as an advanced material for future construction due to its high performance and sustainable nature, its differentiated and unpredictable material characteristics have not only been progressively overlooked, but even been viewed as a negative attribute. Wood’s varied dimensional range has been addressed through standardization, its heterogeneous fiber structure ground and reconstituted into homogeneous composites, and finally its complex aesthetic quality has even been caricaturized into a skin-deep plastic-wood veneer texture. This paper seeks to extend research on the implications of advanced robotic fabrication and its integration into design processes that also integrate cross-disciplinary knowledge into architectural software. As innovation in technology enables architects and engineers to engage with the complexities of the material, the potential of wood is becoming accessible, leading to a new material language. Through a series of full scale, robotically fabricated design prototypes, the material performance of wood is investigated as a driver for form; its fabrication and hygroscopic performance as a driver for assembly, and more importantly, the entire design-to-fabrication-process as a method for investigation into innovation and the structural and architectural potential of future wood.