Architecture and (Waste) Wood: Integrating material traits into structural applications.

Today’s wood practice is characterised by short material lifetimes due to a rejection of defects in building applications for timber and an urgent demand for alternative fuel sources. Furthermore, the renewed interest for wood as a construction material is expected to meet incompatibilities with availability in the coming period due to the amounting pressures of material consumption.

This PhD thesis investigates how architecture is positioned to offer longer lifetimes for wood through structural applications, with specific emphasis on secondary timber. A research-by-design methodology guides four evolving experiments, culminating in the demonstrator project Wood ReFramed, a realised experimental pavilion. Each experiment involves the production of one or more prototypes, the principal material used for empirical assessment and evaluation. These prototypes and the activities surrounding their development have specific epistemological aims for interrogating the different facets of the research project.

The project is contextualised within biomass cascading, a framework that conceptualises extended lifetimes for wood, attracting scholarship from diverse fields. Recent studies include secondary timber’s integration into existing component typologies, alternative structural strategies, material availability assessments, quality mapping, and stakeholder relations. A design strategy is derived from this review, identifying how architecture impacts the material lifetimes of wood in buildings and optimal trajectories for integrating secondary timber into structural applications.
A theoretical framework is devised through materialism, where wood is positioned to display unique relations to form, time, and value, material instabilities that impact its longevity. Meshworks: heterogeneous interrelations without homogenisation is proposed as a theoretical framework for allowing wood’s particulars to be co-responsive during the development of structural applications that offer relative stability.

The four experiments are consequential, investigating the project’s sub-research questions. These include initial practical engagement with secondary timber and its inclusion in different types of structural components; destructive testing of specimens to assess structural performance; the development of distinct production contexts to evaluate how varied forms of knowledge can become embedded into built outcomes; and an environmental assessment, combined with a design for disassembly method that integrates wood specific traits.

The demonstrator project, Wood ReFramed, builds on the findings 6
of these four experiments. Conceived as a building segment, it was developed in collaboration with a demolition contractor, engineer, and fabricators. The project’s development and realisation provides insight into increasing the scale and stakeholders of applying secondary timber to inhabitable load bearing structures.
Finally, the thesis concludes with five propositions: Effectiveness over efficiency, Meshworks, Topology over geometry, Appropriation, and The role of prototypes. These emphasise the thesis’s contributions, offering key considerations for a more effective timber practice in architecture. In summary, they offer design method alternatives to Euclidean representation of material forms capable of handling variability, reconceptualising built outcomes as dependent on a material input, and prioritising material availability over material prescription.

In general, the thesis takes the view that architecture is uniquely positioned to offer new relationships between building practices and the materials upon which they depend.