AFTER ARCHITECTURE’S TANGENTIAL TIMBER NAMED 'BEST IN DIGITAL FABRICATION' BY ARCHITECT’S NEWSPAPER
Image
For the second consecutive year, After Architecture, the practice of Assistant Professors of Architecture, Katie MacDonald and Kyle Schumann, was internationally recognized in AN's Best of Design Awards, presented by The Architect's Newspaper. AN’s Best of Design Awards celebrates outstanding built and unbuilt architectural projects in a range of categories, from cultural destinations to temporary installations, and awards only one top 'Best in' prize in each category. According to AN's editors, "2022 was a bumper crop year: AN received more than double the number of submissions than in typical previous iterations of this program."
Image
After Architecture received the 2022 Best in Digital Fabrication award for Tangential Timber, a project that proposes a construction application for non-linear wood through the development of a digital fabrication workflow that converts cross sections of logs, called “cookies,” into interlocking, structural blocks that can be disassembled and reused. AN's Best of Design juror, Gabriela Etchegaray, Cofounder of Ambrosi Etchegaray, had this to say about Tangential Timber:
“This simple but thoughtful pavilion creates a space by following a methodology that adapts non-standard material stock. It is an efficient approach that advances digital fabrication technics and customization.”
In addition to AN's Best of Design Award 2022 for Digital Fabrication, Tangential Timber received a 2022 R+D Award from Architect Magazine and a 2022 Honor Award for Architecture and Design Excellence from the American Institute of Architect's Central Virginia Chapter. In 2021, MacDonald and Schumann won AN's Best of Design Award for Best in Research for their project Homegrown.
ABOUT TANGENTIAL TIMBER
Timber is typically deemed useful when it is linear with a regular cross section, but that doesn’t mean that logs that are curved, irregular, or otherwise unfit for lumber can’t serve a purpose. Schumann and MacDonald, and their project partners at UVA School of Architecture, including alumna Abigail Hassell (BS Arch '22), the FabLab team, UVA Sawmilling, and a group of student research assistants, have sought to demonstrate a structural application for irregular waste, a resource that is globally available but underutilized in construction. According to the team, more than 55% of harvested timber is deemed unusable in construction due to irregularities, including trees razed from construction sites or damaged by disease or weather. This waste is typically shredded for chips or pulp, or simply discarded.
After Architecture and their team have developed a low-tech, parametric digital imaging workflow to photograph and trace the cookies in 2D and then translate them into 3D models. Cookies are not cut in a fixed size, but rather logs in a range of diameters can be used, and the parametric model is able to adapt the vault design to cookies of any shape or size.
Image
UVA School of Architecture congratulates After Architecture and their collaborators for the ongoing recognition of their work advancing circular construction and computational design.
