Advancing Wood Architecture

A Computational Approach

Achim Menges, Tobias Schwinn, Oliver David Krieg, Achim Menges, Tobias Schwinn, Oliver David Krieg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317392330
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architettura
• Subtopic: Architettura generale

In light of environmental challenges architecture is facing, wood is no longer regarded as outmoded, nostalgic, and rooted in the past, but increasingly recognized as one of the most promising building materials for the future. Recent years have seen unprecedented innovation of new technologies for advancing wood architecture.

Advancing Wood Architecture offers a comprehensive overview of the new architectural possibilities that are enabled by cutting-edge computational technologies in wood construction. It provides both an overarching architectural understanding and in-depth technological information through built projects and the works of four leading design research groups in Europe. The projects presented include large scale, permanent buildings such as the ETH Arch-Tec Lab Building in Zurich, the Landesgartenschau Exhibition Hall near Stuttgart and the Boiler House in Hooke Park, UK, as well as, built research prototypes investigating additive robotic fabrication, folded plate structures and meteorosensitive building skins.

Illustrated in full colour, the book showcases the latest technological developments in design computation, simulation and digital fabrication together with an architectural, engineering and manufacturing perspective, offering an outlook towards novel spatial and constructional opportunities of a material with unrivalled ecological virtues.

PART ONE

Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zürich, Switzerland

1
New paradigms of the automatic

Robotic timber construction in architecture

Jan Willmann, Fabio Gramazio, Matthias Kohler

ETH Zürich, Gramazio Kohler Research, Switzerland

THE combination of pioneering robotic fabrication technology with the sustainable material wood points the way to a future where renewable, possibly local materials are given novel aesthetic and structural potential through bespoke automated robotic assembly methods. In their contribution, Jan Willmann, Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler of Gramazio Kohler Research at ETH Zürich, present novel, interdisciplinary approaches for highly flexible and environmentally sound timber constructions. Through empirical experiments, they not only unlock new opportunities for full-scale digital timber construction, providing structural efficiency through a locally differentiated aggregation of material, but also foster the development of integrative computational design methodologies and techniques.

Automated assembly processes

IN robotic timber construction, new digital design processes and fabrication techniques allow non-standard assembly to become an increasingly interesting architectural avenue, departing from traditional and labour-intensive manufacturing processes. Indeed, despite strong advancements in timber prefabrication using widely available computer numerical control (CNC) systems, the timber construction sector is still characterised by a high proportion of manual assembly tasks. Together with the inherently limited flexibility and constrained working areas of conventional CNC machinery, this handicaps the field when trying to take advantage of the rapidly spreading trend to use complex digital design information directly as input for comprehensively automated construction processes. Here, robotic systems are extremely useful – not only can their use lead to significant time savings, but their ability to transfer computational design data directly to real-world assembly operations enables the fully automated construction of non-standard timber structures (Figures 1.1 and 1.2). In particular, their use opens up entirely new possibilities for future timber construction that is not limited by the same constraints – such as, for example, work-intensive joinery and/or additional scaffolding. Instead, the exploration of robotic timber construction outlines new opportunities for integral automated machining and assembly of building components and the (digital) integration of all additional processing into a unified fabrication system; its most evident and radical consequences are the ability to digitally oversee and control a large number of aspects of the design and construction (for instance the sequencing of the single elements and their assembly). Most importantly robotic systems feature the ability to freely manipulate and position building components in space (Figure 1.3). However, considering building-scale applications, such a fully integrated robotic assembly of complex timber structures is still in its infancy, and presents many theoretical, practical and methodological challenges to architecture.

Figure 1.1
‘The Sequential Wall’ was one of the first projects to investigate the architectural and constructive potential of additive robotic timber fabrication. The interplay of many small parts results in a material system whose aesthetic and functional properties reach far beyond the single timber module.

Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zürich, 2008

Figure 1.2
The custom-built end-effector of the robot corresponds with custom export and design scripts that link the physical machine with digital data.

Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zürich, 2008

Figure 1.3 (facing page)
‘The Stacked Pavilion’ represents a further stage of development and is conceived as a temporary spatial structure and consists of 16 elements made from 372 wooden battens. The pavilion is fabricated from simple wooden battens by robotic cutting and positioning.

Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zürich, 2009

In order to address these challenges, in 2008 the Gramazio Kohler Research group at ETH Zürich started a number of investigations into robotic assembly of complex timber structures. These explorations make an important step away from building with standard elements (such as, for example, bricks) to building with non-standard timber components, where both a novel aesthetic and a functional potential is liberated through the introduction of a minimal customisation of individual components (Gramazio & Kohler, 2008). Due to the fact that these components are not only robotically machined, but also assembled, the resulting structures combine the flexibility of individually fabricated, highly customised building parts with the advantages of additive mass production (Figure 1.4). As such, these structures can be fabricated without any need for repetition, at low cost and with a constant and controllable quality. The driving force of this approach is not the mere rationalisation of fabrication but the exploration of novel timber constructions, and their relation to the design freedom, the structural performance and the robotic assembly itself.

Starting initially from layer-based systems by robotically adding customised timber members into non-standard walls and structures, the research has substantially expanded during the last years towards the robotic aggregation of elements freely in space (Figure 1.5). Material is placed exactly where it is needed according to the digital blueprint and there is no need for repetition or standard construction routines, as it is usually required in any economic ‘manual’ build-up process. As such, this approach yields not only to minimal material waste but also additional material savings since there is no need to construct additional scaffolding or external building references.

Figure 1.4
‘The Sequential Structure’ expands the layered constructive system towards a spatial constructive system. The resulting shell structure (consisting of 26 individually fabricated structural components) enables a flexible response to local structural requirements and is based on a hanging chain model, developed in cooperation with the Block Research Group at ETH Zürich.

Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zürich, 2010

Figure 1.5
The building structure consists of 3,026 individual timber slats that were cut to length, automatically placed and glued by an industrial robot.

Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zürich, 2010

This unique approach on spatial timber assemblies is particularly explored in the framework of the SNSF NRP 66 ‘Resource Wood’ research programme and created first experimental demonstrations, which are presented in the first part of this chapter. Subsequently, this article will discuss the industrial implementation of research, and a first large-scale demonstration, called ‘The Sequential Roof’. Both endeavours required many innovations (including the development of novel computational design and construction processes, interfacing seamlessly with automated fabrication procedures), and successfully illustrated the potentials of comprehensively automated assembly processes, fostering profound changes in the design, performance and expression of architecture at building scale.

Advances in timber manufacturing

DESPITE the fact that architecture is constantly getting more complex, the building industry does not make effective use of modern computational fabrication technologies. In fact, it is still strongly driven by manual construction processes, which results in high costs, inconsistent work quality and significant waste of human and material resources. One reason for the low level of industrialisation of the building industry in comparison to other manufacturing industries, such as, for instance, the automotive industry, is the fact that typically building constructions are unique. As ‘one of a kind’ productions they are custom-built in accordance to individual needs and contexts. However, a particular case is presented by the timber construction sector, which through the arrival of digitally controlled joinery machines for automated manufacturing of timber construction components by the 1980s gained the possibility of a radical technological reorientation (Kuechle & Volkmann, 1986). Alongside the development of innovative, high-quality timber construction products, the associated transformation introduced a remarkable increase in flexibility and manufacturing productivi...