Timber Links

This page links to relevant Web resources.  Add your annotated links.  The following are from Nancy’s Diigo Outliner on Wood Tectonics.

Nature of Wood

• Billie Faircloth – The beauty & mystery of the 2×4 – TEDxPhilly on YouTube
  Reflections on the varied relationships that humans have with wood and how we transform a tree into a commodity building product. An imperative to consider the ecosystem and biology of trees at all scales.
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  ICD Stuttgart’s HygroScope: Meterosensitive Morphology – YouTube
  Pavilion with kinetic openings created from wood veneer curling with humidity. Project Created by the Institute for Computational Design at the University of Stuttgart, led by Achim Menges and Transsolar Clmate Engineering. Shows the fiber extension tests, robotic construction.
  

CLT and Tall Wood

• Michael Green: Why we should build wooden skyscrapers – YouTube
  Vancouver architect explains a vision for wood buildings as the ultimate carbon sequestration solution.
• Resources for Toward Taller Wood Buildings
  Presentations and papers on mass timber construction by the Wood Products Council. Includes Gordon Finch’s excellent building enclosure detailing for tall cross-laminated timber buildings at the bottom of the page. http://www.woodworks.org/wp-content/uploads/TTWB-2014-Finch-Building-Enclosure-Assemblies.pdf

Material-based digital fabrication (includes non-timber)

• IBOIS Laboratory for Timber Construction at EPFL
  Top research group investigating opportunities for new methods of building with wood lead by Yves Weinand at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland. Topics include Shell Structures Structural and Architectural Design Digital Fabrication (NCCR) Mechanical Engineering New Timber Products
• Parametric Wood
  Parametric design and wood advanced research seminar lead by Mark Cabrinha at Cal Poly SLO. Focuses on articulating structures such as gridshells, lamellas and panelized systems.
• Active Matter Summit: A Conference Organized by the Self-Assembly Lab, MIT
  Interdisciplinary symposium on programming matter for behavior organized by Skylar Tibbits and the MIT Media Lab Self-Assembly group. “We can now sense, compute, and actuate with materials alone, just as we could with software and hardware platforms previously. How does this shift influence materials research, and how does it shape the future of design, arts, and industrial applications? What tools and design processes do we need to advance, augment and invent new materials today? What are the key roles that industry, government, academic and public institutions can play in catalyzing the field of programmable materials?”
• Innochain | CHALLENGING THE TRADITIONAL THINKING OF DESIGN
  “The InnoChain ETN network of practice and academia is a shared research training environment examining how advances in digital design tools challenge building culture enabling sustainable, informed and materially smart design solutions. The network aims to train a new generation of interdisciplinary researchers with a strong industry focus that can effect real changes in the way we think, design and build our physical environment…”
• Collective Construction – YouTube
  Mini-robots designed after termites show the ability to construct complex forms by following simple instructions. Their parts are carefully shaped to enable the specific construction behavior: for example, they are designed to always right themselves. from Harvard Wyss Institute and Engineering and Applied Sciences group.

Design-build structures in education

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  Kimmo_Räisänen-Wood_Program at Aalto University Department of Architecture
  Elegantly detailed wood structures are created by students in Aalto University’s Wood Program. Students begin to learn material properties and connections by creating table-top cubes, joining small pieces of wood. They scale up to a furniture size object as preparation for their inhabitable group project.
• Curved Folded Wood Pavilion – A thin shell structure made from CLT – YouTube
  Elegant wood pavilion designed by Hani Buri is constructed with robotic-cutting tour-de-force by IBois team at EPFL.
• Shell Star Assembly and Construction
  Video of the assembly and construction of Shell Star, an installation for Detour: Design Renegade, an art and design festival in Hong Kong. Shell Star was designed and constructed by Andrew Kudless (Matsys) + Riyad Joucka (HKU) In collaboration with Ricci Wong (Art Lab HK) and the students of the Architecture department of the Chinese University and Hong Kong University.
• CalPoly SLO | Molding Ecologies – Performative Composite Facade Research
  Collaboration between CalPoly Architecture lead by Mark Cabrinha, Kreysler Associates and Enclos facade specialists.
• Climb-ables
  Students in Margit Rudy’s 2008 studio at University of Oregon created a number of creative climbing structures.
• Thin shells of earth
  AA Visiting School Lyon 2013 created a very thin set of vaults using digital modeling to generate plywood and fabric structure. The project was simultaneous withthe CRATerre festival of Earthen Architecture.

Bending

• Dermoid, active bending structure by CITA and RMIT – booklet on issuu
  Tesselated shell forms created by modules in active bending. System was developed in a series of workshops at CITA and RMIT
• Curved Folding
  This is a place where we can work together towards an open CAD standard, initially based on a quad-mesh geometry, for representing and modelling curved folding geometries…and show what we have crafted in paper, modelled in CAD and then fabricated. Join us!!! The site was set up by Gregory Epps, founder of RoboFold, as a way to create a common network for anyone involved in folding, CAD and fabrication.

Websites for learning structures

• eQUILIBRIUM, web-based Graphics Statics
  Interactive visual examples of how adjusting forms of trusses and arches changes the stresses on each member
• ActiveStatics
  Try changing the shape and loading of archtypal structures such as trusses and see how this alters the forces in their members. Based on Waclaw Zalewski and Ed Allen’s Shaping Structures: Statics, with a CD-ROM by Joseph Iano. Delightful interactive application!

Software

• Mode Lab | Grasshopper Primer
  Strong graphic introduction to Grasshopper parametric design software for McNeel’s Rhinoceros. Download the dataset as well as the PDF.
• Examples | KARAMBA3D
  “Karamba is a parametric structural engineering tool which provides accurate analysis of spatial trusses, frames and shells. Karamba is fully embedded in the parametric design environment of Grasshopper, a plug-in for the 3d modeling tool Rhinoceros. This makes it easy to combine parameterized geometric models, finite element calculations and optimization algorithms like Galapagos.”
• Karamba Tutorial – by Parametric Court
  Learn the basics of Karamba with detailed guidance on getting the settings correct.
• Millipede – Grasshopper
  Millipede is a structural analysis and optimization component for grasshopper. It allows for very fast linear elastic analysis of frame and shell elements in 3…
• Scan-and-Solve for Rhino – Simulate Early, Simulate Often… In Rhino
  For users of Rhino who share the vision of seamless linear structural analysis of native Rhino solids without meshing!
• Solid Thinking’s Inspire: Morphogenesis
  Includes topological optimization: Form-finding by eliminating material not needed for structure
• Platypus collaboration tool for Rhino Grasshopper

Joints

• Large Timber Connection videos – rothoblaas
  Rothoblaas shows how to connect large timber members using its specialized connection hardware. Videos clearly show the sequence of operations such as cutting, drilling and fastening to create a solid joint. Like furniture joints on steroids!