ESR2- INTEGRATING MATERIAL PERFORMANCE

AUTHOR: Tom Svilans

March 22, 2017.

A couple of photos and a short video from the Design Probes colloquium exhibition earlier this month in Vienna.

How can the integration of material performance and digital sensing lead to new models and modes of working between early-stage design and industrial fabrication, in the context of free-form glue-laminated timber assemblies?

Developments in material sciences, digital design tools, and fabrication techniques have added an unprecedented amount of complexity to the design and production of buildings. This novel condition necessitates alternate ways of conceptualizing and managing the design-production process and has made obvious the need for integration across disciplines, specializations, and scales. This also presents an opportunity to re-examine a complex material such as timber in this new light, potentially leading to material-driven design solutions and new structural morphologies.

The project addresses three distinct but overlapping themes in this context:

• the production and communication of knowledge across design, development and fabrication networks
• the integration of the material performance of engineered timber into these networks through computational tools
• the application of digital sensing and acquisition tools to industrial timber fabrication workflows.