Negotiated Materialization: Design Approaches Integrating Wood Heterogeneity Through Advanced Robotic Fabrication

Abstract

Whilst robots are predictable, repetitive, predefined and constant, natural materials present unpredictable complexity. Over the past few centuries, materials have been standardized to fit industrial processes, in an attempt to defy this unpredictability. Thanks to new advances in sensing technologies and computational design, today we have the opportunity to reintegrate the intrinsic properties of natural materials in their full complexity. What is the potential of a synthesis between the particularity of each specific material element-specific properties and parameters-informing the fabrication process? Digital and Robotic Fabrication are based on the use of flexible machines that open the possibility to mass-customize the production process. Combined with sensors and computational analysis, they allow to work with "soft systems", both adaptable and continuously evolving, whose dynamism is constantly fed by a flow of information. How can the designer integrate this uncertainty and complexity in the design process? In this paper the authors specifically discuss the management of structural and material tolerance inherent to large scale construction and anisotropic materials, such as wood. A series of projects developed and built at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and the Bartlett School of Architecture are used as case studies to investigate tolerance management in Digital Fabrication with different kinds of wood.

Workflow for a Timber Joinery Robotics

“…En un modelo CAD tridimensional, la representación idealizada de un miembro lineal de madera, es suficiente para realizar simulaciones estructurales (Kohlhammer et al, 2017) pero para muchos procesos sustractivos de piezas de geometría compleja, aparecen problemas adicionales cuando se trata del montaje de materiales que tienen tolerancias muy altas (Stumm et al, 2017). Estas tolerancias o errores, independiente de su origen, se acumulan durante las diversas fases del proyecto, desde la fabricación hasta el montaje de componentes (Brugnaro et al, 2019). Muchos de estos errores se han resuelto en el estado del arte mediante la implementación de mecanismos de retroalimentación basados en sensores que permiten absorber las incongruencias entre la realidad física y los modelos digitales.…”

A reversible connection for robotic assembly of timber structures

“…However, the automated assembly of discrete timber elements is still challenging, particularly in providing structurally reliable connections. Existing research has demonstrated robot assembly using glue-based [3,14,15] or nailed connections [7,16,17]. However, these solutions are not demountable and strongly limit the reusability of the timber elements and, thereby, the overall potential for material circularity.…”