Building from Scrap: Computational Design and Robotic Fabrication Strategies for Spatial Reciprocal Structures from Plate-shaped Wooden Production Waste
Abstract
This paper describes an innovative methodology allowing upcycling production waste into legitimate construction material for spatial structures, with minimal change to elements` shape. The system is based on interlocking joints between the boards. The plates are organized around nodes, creating a three-dimensional reciprocal system guaranteeing the stability of the entire structure, without any fasteners. We use an inversed, data-driven design process, in which unique components are defining the form of the structure. The design-to-production workflow consists of measuring and labeling of the elements, creating a data file, data-driven generation of the structure with a custom form-finding algorithm, structural optimization of the form, robotic processing of the scraps and manual assembly. The proposed methodology was tested in public spaces as a temporary pavilion and three wood-clay composite sitting elements, thus practically demonstrating the feasibility of our approach.
Keywords
Circular economy in construction, data-driven design, design based on availability, robotic fabrication, spatial reciprocal structures
Thanks
The research was conducted at the BFH School of Architecture, Wood and Civil Engineering. The case study `Structure from scraps` was executed in a research-oriented teaching project. The authors would like to sincerely thank all the collaborators of the project from outside of the institution: Thomas Wehrle from ERNE AG Holzbau for material provision and collaboration on the demonstrator, Tecslot for providing software for the AR assembly test, TouchWood and ArchitekturWoche Basel for invitation the project to the exhibitions. Within BFH: Lukas Furrer for conducting structural analysis, Katharina Lindenberg for support at design, Bruno Salzmann and Stanislas Zimmermann for helping on the assembly of bench objects, and the bachelor students who took part in the workshops: Matthias Spalinger, Gian Salzgeber, Jonas Hausammann, Tino Attenhofer, Sandro Gisler, Gérôme Koehn, Samuel Beer, Michael Schori, Mathias Rüede, Samuel Pulfer, Josua Bieler, Leila Dolder and Nicolas Schönenberger.
The authors wish to thank Alexander Arregui Leszcz at ARCHIBATCH (https://archibatch.com/) for providing several photographs for this publication. His support is greatly appreciated.
We thank Christopher Holmes for checking our manuscript prior to the submission and providing valuable feedback on the text.
This article was presented at the ATI2022 'De-Constructing and Re-Using Architecture' Symposium and has been published only as an abstract.
The article complies with national and international research and publication ethics. Ethics Committee approval was not required for the study.
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