Future Wood / Three Frontiers CDRN workshop
This event is a symposium on east coast wood innovation, followed by a ‘Generative Components’ parametric software workshop. This Canadian Design Research Network sponsored event will be held at the the School of Architecture, Dalhousie University from October 1-3, 2007. The cost of the workshop is $60.00 or $20.00 for students. Cost includes a workshop lunch and refreshments. To participate contact Jordan Winters at:
Through visits to innovative practitioners and design workshops, participants will look to expand the body of ideas concerning the digital fabrication of wood. We will identify and venture across three frontiers; of machinery, of materials, and of mathematics.
Machinery - Digital fabricators have borrowed machines from signmakers, machinists, and others without questioning the assumptions built into this equipment. It is also expensive. Is this the machinery architecture dreams of and that builders need? Through a demonstration of the Orb Factory wire bender and John Macnab’s planetary lathe, participants will be exposed to broader possibilities - and at the same time, to smaller budgets.
Materials - Machine tools work from an absolute frame of reference rather than in response to a particular workpiece. In this situation, structural and geometric features that could be turned to architectural advantage appear as troublesome irregularities. How can information-based machinery learn to appreciate the information content of wood? How can digital production systems capitalize on the informational richness of an ecologically complex forest? Through a presentation based on regional woodlot practices, participants will gain insight into this timely question.
Mathematics - The inherent information processing of a bent drafting batten generated a curve of least total bending energy. Boatbuilders and until surprisingly recently aeronautical designers have made use of this curve as a definition of least total disruption of fluid flow. NURBS splines are more adaptable and therefore impart less information to an artifact. Can we learn to apply the abstract information of a computer system without erasing the informational potential of actual material? Based on a visit to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic boatbuilding shop and the School of Architecture CNC shop, participants will begin to address this question.
The workshop will concentrate on the interplay between design, material and computation. Computation includes simulation, optimization, form finding, evaluation, genetic algorithms and other methodology designed to enhance design/computer interaction. The workshop will be based on using the parametric tools available in Bentley’s Generative Components. The software workshop leader will be Rob Woodbury, Simon Fraser University.
Requirements: See the Bentley Systems software workshop page.