PERFORMATIVE WOOD

Harvard University // Research + Installation Prototype // Cambridge, MA // 2010

(Collaboration with Brad Crane, Yang Zhao, Marshall Prado)

This project seeks to engage the novelty of kerfing and wood bending in a broader discussion regarding Architecture’s current agendas in form-making and fabrication technologies. While the desire for formal novelty has pushed technological advances within the field of design to a blinding pace, the intelligence regarding methodologies of production remains in its infancy.

The solution to this disconnect first requires asking the right questions, not about geometry, but about material. The disconnect between designer and fabricator are proliferated, perhaps even magnified, when digital fabrication meets biological composite in the form of wood. This project promotes the notion that the calibrated discontinuity of wood fiber can be the code and form enabler of a complex wood system.