SpaceWeave

PROJECT DATA

Project Team   Yin Teng Chin
                     Scarlett Rogers
                     Rita Aziz
                     Mitchell Moxey

Timber Medium 45 x 90mm

Tree Species Radiata Pine

Embodied Carbon - 41.38 kgCO2e
Installation Piece

Overview

The project aims to create a canopy for the DAB cafe courtyard as an installation piece for South by Southwest. As a group, our focus is on a space frame structure built by radiata pine provided by Hyne Timber. Though this type of timber is easily available and rapidly grown, its softwood nature brought great challenges in creating joints that are structurally sound without the use of additional reinforcements.

The installation sits lightly on site with little obstruction as means to activate the space and create a point of interest whilst being sustainability efficient with its material usage through parametric and generative design. We have maintained views as connection points to the mezzanine courtyard adjacent to the site and have experimented with potential shading opportunities.

We have worked closely with our elected radiata pine material in a standard 45mm x 90mm [2” x 4”] form for easy use and common in the construction of Australian homes. However, specifically, we sieved through and sorted our material from a reject pile of “unusable” material wrought with bowed, split and waterlogged elements.

By designing digitally and computationally focusing on our material input, we were able to make the “unusable” usable for the lowest-embodied carbon design and recover as much strong material as possible. The design focuses on timber-to-timber connections, placing importance on the large dowels and robotically cut joints to completely remove steel from the equation. Using CAD and CAM systems to engineer hyper-precise cuts and joinery to the micromillimeter allowed our options for material quality to expand while decreasing fabrication time and room for human error.

Our team spent time in post-fabrication testing the joint quality and limit testing the members before starting construction - where we would focus on constructing each truss-like frame that works in parallel with each other. The design evolves from here into a spaceframe where the connections between the structural lines where utilisation evens out and overall takes less material than a standard truss system.

In efforts to completely remove steel from our design, the joinery needed to be dispersed along the members in the most structurally efficient way so as not to strain the elements themselves but also create room for timber connections. A simple task for our evolutionary matrixes as they could parametrically take control of the best angles, form and location of these vices.

Our approach to decarbonisation is to minimise the embodied carbon of our structure, and the material waste generated during construction. The WoodSolutions Softwood EPD, as referenced by Hyne Timber for their T3 product, provides the embodied carbon and energy values for every m3 of timber. We have integrated this information in combination with our knowledge of the material’s properties within an evolutionary algorithm to determine whether any given structural system succeeds as a design, or fails. Through this design process, our project has a minimal effect on both the environment and on site.

Superwood

Computational Design and Robotic Fabrication for Decarbonisation

AR Installation

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