Booklet: Parametric Wood (2007)

PA R AWO O D Non Standard Te chniq u e s IN cont emporary Woodc ra ft IN G

http://cita.karch.dk

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CITAproject - ParaWood - Non Standard Wood construction Previous work of the Centre for IT and Architecture laid investigated the link between parametric design, mass customisation and traditional woodcraft techniques in a digital fabrication environment.

The project Parawood was a collaborative endeavour between the Machining company Hundegger, the software company HSB-CAD and Douglas A/S a company from wood manufacturing.

Within this project a parametric design system was used to create production data for a structure that consisted of mass customized wood elements.

Through close collaboration the project relevant knowledge concerning the timber fabrication could be encoded into the design system. When this was done a very effective production process was established, were the design could test the boundaries of wood

construction but was yet within the machineries limits.

The research project led to a demonstrator, which was shown in two venues in 2008.

Due to the efficient wood joinery machines the process for production was at 4 hours, where theactual assembly took 8 hours.

The ParaWood wood demoinstrator in the DigitalPractice exhibition in April 2009. The constrcution consists of 72 unique elements, which were peoduced on Hundegger K2 machine by Douglas A/S.

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Traditional wood craft created a big variety of monolithic wood joints.

Contemporary wood joinery machines can produces some of those.

Transfoming Crafting - Wood Joints in a new context The project ParaWood unveiled the potential of traditional wood joints for new wooden constrcutions. Where todays architecture demands for more complex geometries causes usually problems in assembly and adjusting of elmenets traditional wood craft developed a huge variety of self registering joints. These provide a way of snap fit design in building scale.

Made from monolithic material dovetails, tennon joints and many more gain new relevance through digital fabrication proceeses. The ParaWood research project demonstrated how complex constructions can be easily build by combining traditional craft and digital fabrication.

The mass customization of its wooden beams was allowed through the parametric control of the construction geometry. This allowed to adjust the postions of the beams due to the specific requierments of the chosen joints. While this gave precision on the local level of the construction the overal geometry was flexible to change due to new insights from a structural or design point of view.

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The ParaWood construction uses 6 different types of traditional wood joints, among those tenon, half rafter, double cut and dovetail joints. Their specific requirments and limits were encoded in the parametric system and allowed the design to utilise the full capacity of the fabrication machinery.

ParaWood was a interdisciplinary collaboration between partners from industry, academia and the crafts.

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The ROM gallery in Oslo will host the exhibition digital.material.

A very early sketch of a possiblesize and arrangement with the structural system.

di gital. material - the Oslo exhibition Venue - ROM gallery

The exhibition

ROM - the norwegian word for space is the leading architectural gallery in Norway. With a more than 20 year long experience the gallery developed into a central hub for architecture and art related ideas with an excellent reputation. Exhibitions in the 500 sqm big space meet the interest from architects and designers from all over Scandinavia. The gallery is located in the lively centre of Oslo and consist of indoor as well as outdoor exhibition spaces.

The exhibition digital.material will create a platform that communicates the potentials of new computer controlled production process for architectural practice.

By inviting CITA the R.O.M. gallery will create a forum for discussion and exchange between professionals from various building and design related disciplines.

This will happen in workshops with participants from a series of international Universities as well as an interdisciplinary seminar for academics and professionals at R.O.M. For the exhibition a catalogue will be produced, which is published internationally.

The development of new digital tools, that integrate formgiving as well as production logics, show biggest

potential for a change in the industrialized building practice. Where the public opinion often sees digital technology as abstract digital production processes show the actually existing nearness to material, detail and construction. Digital production establishes a direct link between design and production. The digital tool controls directly the mill, saw, bending machines, cutting laser or additive processes. Where the digital production process have a 50 year long history, only recently new more adaptable digital design tools enabled the interface to design environments. This link allows architects and designers to redirect their attention from the standardized industrial product towards the specific and craft related and develop high complex solutions, wherein mass customized parts can answer the actual needs of situations and users.

Dates Assembly 16. – 23. April Exhibition 24.-23. April Opening 23. April Seminar 26. April Workshop 19.-22. May Disassembly 24. – 25. May

NON STA N D A R D W O OD J a n uar y. 2 0 1 0 CITA is an innovative research environment exploring the emergent intersections between architecture and digital technologies.

Identifying core research questions into how space and technology can be probed, CITA seeks to investigate how the current forming of a digital culture impacts on architectural thinking and practice.

CITA examines how architecture is influenced by new digital design- and produc-tion tools as well as the digital practices that are informing our societies culturally, socially and technologically. Using design and practice based research methods; the aim is to explore the conceptualisation, design and realisation of working pro-totypes.

CITA consolidates new collaborations with interdisciplinary partners from the fields of computer graphics, human computer interaction, robotics, artificial intelligence as well as the practice based fields of furniture design, fashion and textiles, industrial design, film, dance and interactive arts.

By examining technology transfers between high-innovative industries, that stand on front edge in the development of new digitalised designs- and production tools, it’s our goal to create synergy between the subject’s contemporary reality and its future perspective.

The centre focuses on IT as tool for design, production and communication of architecture and has in the last 4 years established a series of projects on new pa-rametric design tools, rapid prototyping and CAD / CAM, programmable material, simulation and intelligent programming. The Centre has furthermore started a new research project on Building Information Modelling (BIM) and the digitally controlled building process (Det Digitale Byggeri).

The Centre for IT and Architecture gained international acknowledged expertise in the integration of simulation, material behaviour and process information in design through projects in mass customisation strategies, material specification and fabrication as Parametric Wood, SlowFurl, DevA Developable Surfaces in Ar-chitecture and the development and production of the travelling exhibition “it’s a SMALL world” for the Danish Design and Architectural Centre. These projects allowed CITA to formulate a reality based theoretical background. The Centre has gained advanced skills in design and realisation, as well as in project management and control of research based projects.

CITA / Center for IT and Architecture

- Mette Ramsgard Thomsen, Associate Professor and Head of CITA - Martin Tamke, Associate Professor - Phil Ayres,Adjunct Professor - Odilo Schoch, Adjunct Professor - Karin Bech, Research assistant - Jacob Riiber, Research assistant

- Norbert Palz, PhD student - Brady Peters, Phd student - Aurelie Mossé, Phd student - Anders Hermund, Phd student

Centre for IT and Architecture (CITA) Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture Philip de Langes Allé 10/ 1435 Copenhagen K / tel +45 32686650 / fax +45 32686658 Denmark http://cita.karch.dk