Integrative strategies across the digital timber value chain

The surging demand for timber in construction due to its many ecological and structural benefits brings with it parallel concerns for its sustainable exploitation and the resultant increased stress on the forest biome. The intelligent and efficient utilization of the forest resource is therefore a necessary focus if its exploitation is to be kept within sustainable boundaries. This efficiency has long been challenged by the inherent material complexity of wood and the high variance of its properties. Considering recent technological developments at the beginning of the wood value chain, as well as computational and simulation-based approaches in design, two intertwining opportunities arise. The first is the ability to effect a 3d mapping of material properties in timber logs through computed tomography (CT) scanning at the sawmill and integrate this into traditionally computational design and fabrication workflows. The second is the potential to synthesize and align the simulated performance demands of engineered timber elements with these mappings of found heterogeneous material properties. This paper describes current efforts at CITA-the RawLam experiments-to integrate digital developments across the timber value chain into computational design workflows. In doing so, it seeks to reveal new opportunities in design aesthetics and material optimization, as well as to provoke new modes of design modelling.