TerraTimber / Professorship for Digital Design & Fabrication (DDF) + Professorship Design of Structures (dos) + Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
Text description provided by the architects. TerraTimber introduces an innovative method for the digital upcycling of waste wood to create circular construction systems enabling the sustainable transformation of reclaimed materials into structural elements. This approach utilizes computational tools and Augmented Reality (AR) fabrication processes to manage the complexity of diverse, non-standard waste wood materials. Starting from the generation of digital inventories through image processing, the wood pieces are then computationally assembled into large structural elements, which are finally physically assembled with nails made of wood and with the aid of AR. Earth is integrated to form a hybrid material system, enabling the construction of sustainable floor slabs from natural and recyclable materials.
The overall structure exemplifies a fragment of a multi-story building designed with Design for Disassembly principles, employing an interlocking, metal-free joinery system for the primary post-and-beam framework. TerraTimber demonstrates how repurposing waste from building demolitions and industrial residues can transform industrial practices, shifting from a linear to a circular economic model by viewing waste as a valuable resource in construction.
Wood-earth Hybrid Construction System – The core of the demonstrator is a floor slab system made from a wood-earth hybrid. This concept utilizes the unique arrangement of irregular leftover wood pieces to create a rough surface that, when filled with earth, forms a metal-free structural shear interface between the two materials. Earth can be seen as an ecological and recyclable concrete substitute that increases the load-bearing capacity of the hybrid building material, but also brings thermal mass into the component and ensures good sound and fire protection.
Digital Upcycling: Leveraging Computational Design and Augmented Reality to Upcycle Waste Wood – Digital techniques and computational design emerge as crucial tools in the transition towards circular construction thanks to their ability to navigate the complexity and variability found in waste materials. This research presents a specifically tailored approach to tackle the complexities of waste wood, delineating a co-developed workflow that includes material digitization, iterative computational design for aggregating the waste wood pieces, structural design, and the transfer from digital models to physical fabrication. This “Digital Upcycling” approach, where digital methods are at the forefront to repurpose small-scale waste materials into large construction elements, embodies a bottom-up design strategy where the available resources guide the creation process.
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