Algorithms Behind Spatial Timber Structures
Lecture Notes for the 8. Wood Conference in Cape Town, Republic of South Africa
The chess-playing Deep Blue system beat reigning world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. This point of time is only where the big picture begins — contemporary algorithms enable the emergence of self-learning hardware and software to adapt as they are exposed to new data or parameters. Current algorithms transfer this notion to the landscape of building design and the fabrication processes especially in the dynamic developing construction sectors as the timber industry.
The Parish Church St. Josef under construction ©Holzbau Amann GmbH
With respect to the balance between aesthetics and sustainability, the combined application of algorithms on design and fabrication processes of timber structures are providing re-approved influence to the building industry by showing economic reasoning by short-term return on investment. In this context the church St. Josef, that is located in German market town Holzkirchen near Munich in Bavaria is a notable example and worth to be considered in detail. The notable development in that building is the emergence, which happening after two decades of the human-machine battle — between the chess prodigy and artifactual creation developed by IBM. In a very similar way how the champion machine is structuring the chess game strategy, literally by surrogating the human thinking process, the design process underlies. Instead of handling the design and construction processes in a classical way — by drawing and craftsmanship, the manufacturer Holzbau Amann GmbH used a parametric design paradigm to realise the design of the architect Eberhard Wimmer.
The diagrid is shaping the interior design ©Holzbau Amann GmbH
Providing a survey in algorithmic influences on contemporary spatial timber structures with the focus on the design and fabrication processes, one aspect may be predicted with reasonable certainty. For the largest stratum of engineers, very substantial changes in human-computer interaction, visual programming tools, a host of other support disciplines, and in the legacy of woodworking craftsmanship will have to occur before there can be a large-scale return from the engineer-user of today to the engineer-programmer of the past.
The finished look of the interior ©Holzbau Amann GmbH
Algorithms shaping the contemporary landscape of design are giving a visionary outlook that encourages to rethink the role of algorithms and see the new potential, as well as not missing the new opportunity, especially for timber structures. Where the society needs serious innovations, as at the construction, as well as in academia, are the ones who create new approaches as machine learning driven architectural design, which is not latest important for the reaching sustainable future. But that doesn’t preclude the mainstream understanding of what creating algorithms or simply coding work actually is. For the last two decades, the society developed an overpromoted the prodigy coder, but the real heroes are people who link the grasshopper spaghetti every day.
Parametric Model is done in Grasshopper ©Dimitry Demin
The evidence is straightforward — the common Euclidean space used by architects and engineers to concept their projects is disrupted by a new kind of dimensionality — the algorithm. His influence is supported by innovation in the computer science influencing design, engineering, fabrication and material science; and thereby providing new value-creating impacts in building aesthetics, that we already see in the appearance of contemporary structures. Algorithms are a special matter — it was what we humans discovered not as long ago, and definitely not what we created.