ESR: Ayoub Lharchi

ESR NUMBER: ESR14

INDUSTRIAL PARTNERS: designtoproduction + Bluhmer Lehmann

INSTITUTE: CITA

Description:

One of the central achievements of digital chain is the ability to mass customise building elements creating individualised solutions and enabling new kinds of building geometries. While methods for the design and production of customised elements have matured, the planning of assembly procedures remains undeveloped in the building sector – in contrast to for example to product design . Construction takes place in time and entails interdependent interactions as one element carries the other. The lack of robust planning tools impedes structural innovation as constructions can only be solved through simple and known assembly systems. This project develops methods for the analysis and planning of assembly. With a focus on timber construction, the project investigates the use of self-jigging joinery in which the mass customised detailing of timber elements embed bespoke joinery into the single element. These solutions promise sustainable and more resilient structures as self-jigging joints eliminate the need for additional joinery systems, minimise tolerances and reduce material complexity. The research transfers concepts from parallel fields of product design, computer science and mathematics : the development of workflows and strategies for the design of assembled structures, the development of metrics for quantitatively identifying good solutions with respect to the whole manufacturing and assembly process and the development of digital simulation tools to analyse dependencies and feedback assembly solutions to the design environment.