robotic timber – 2019

The project explores the potential impact of creating a new architecture-specific robotic system for the creation of complex timber assemblies. The developed system is composed of multiple collaborative single axis robots, designed to utilize standardized timber beams as a building material and for its locomotion system. The material is therefore not only used in the final built structure but forms an integral part of the robotic system, minimizing its complexity. The minimalism, low cost, lightness in weight and robustness of the entire system contrasts current standards of pre-fabrication and pre-planned structures for timber-based architecture. When the proposed system is deployed on-site, one can imagine multiple robotic teams working quickly and in parallel to create structures with long spans or large heights that are reversible and through that adaptive to change. As such, a construction future is conceptualized where distributed robotics can build around the clock, higher, faster, stronger and quieter.

The project is currently exhibited as a large scale installation at the Ars Electronica Museum in Linz (Austria) and at Bureau Europa in Maastricht (Netherlands). It was awarded a Sonderpreis by the German Wood Council Deutscher Förderpreis Holzbau 2019

University of Stuttgart, ITECH MSc Thesis with Samuel Leder, 2019
Prof. Achim Menges, Prof. Jan Knippers, Dylan Wood, Oliver Bucklin