Wood sustainablilty data visualisation beyond the sensory

Project Authors

Olga Popovic Larsen, project leader
Xan Browne, project coordinator
Milan Jaćević, game design and multimodal interfaces
Frederik Weber, drawing and photography
Gustav Dupont Billund, drawing and photography
Joonseok Pak, 3D scanning and digital workflows
Martin Tamke, 3D scanning and visualisation

Description

Wood Sustainability: Data visualisation beyond the sensory investigates waste wood’s potential as a multi-generational material. We anticipate a future where raw material use is minimised and building with (what we currently regard as) waste becomes the common choice. The project investigates visualising the information of waste wood such as geometry, texture and colouration and how these characteristics can be viewed as an opportunity rather than limitation in creating architecture. Wood, as a natural material, widely applied in buildings across the globe, takes on many forms throughout its life with no two pieces ever the same. This timeframe creates a broad variety of material information that can be used to qualify many aspects such as age, quality, energy/economic value and carbon storage. Wood gathers signs of its previous use, physical/chemical contaminants and breakages that become important variables and for understanding its potential value, that also define possible future applications.

Through the use of digital and analogue techniques including photography, 3D scanning and drawing we aim to gather the information of waste wood in a number of formats to then be visualised as an interactive animation. Comprising of a library of defects this aims to create a thorough description of what makes waste wood waste, and how these could contribute to an architectural vocabulary of building with waste. Core components of the project are multimodality, and interdisciplinarity as the project combines different modes of communication to deliver a message about waste wood’s sustainable potential through a collaboration of approaches and disciplines including architecture, design, carpentry, engineering and game design. The project builds upon parallel project: Nordic Waste Wood for Good: bridging culture and technique that focuses on the sustainable potential of wood at an architectural scale through hysical experiments supported by the Nordic Culture Fund.

Special thanks