GluLamb: A toolkit for early-stage modelling of free-form glue-laminated timber structures

This paper focuses on the integration of material and fabrication parameters into the early-stage digital design of free-form glue-laminated (glulam) timber structures. This integration constitutes an embedding of a glulam materiality into digital design modelling tools. This paper presents GluLamb, a software modelling toolkit that implements a constrained glulam blank model for the design and fabrication of glulam elements. The general functionality of this toolkit is described and three case studies are presented which show the application of GluLamb in different contexts: design simulation in research, design exploration and rationalization in an architectural practice setting, and as the basis for a digital design-to-fabrication workflow.