Timber Curtain: Timber Curtain at FORSK

Timber Curtain is a latticed wooden partition screen made from individually shaped timber parts. It is developed as part of a research project, focusing on the meeting between the digital drawing and computer-controlled machining. We benefit from the fact that we can take lines from the digital drawing and use them for computer-controlled processing of the material. Through a computer-controlled process, we sketch directly into the physical material, which then informs the design process at an early stage and opens for surprising results.

Timber Curtain was designed and produced through use of a CNC-router; a computer-controlled machine for processing materials. We did a series of experiments through CNC-milling of timber, using lines from a digital drawing. [1] The knowledge gained from the experiments were collected as data and written into a digital code. The digital code was used to construct a bespoke system that could show configurations of the timber parts assembled into a larger structure. Then we developed a method for generating the structure from a few control lines that easily could be changed in the digital drawing. The unique shape of the timber parts was automatically adjusted to work with the overall shape and pattern of the lattice.

The digital customised system helped us to explore a large variation of possible spatial configurations because the geometry of the individual timber parts automatically was adjusted. For example, the bendable section of the timber part was automatically twisted in order to give it the right direction for meeting the adjoining part. [3] In a similar way, the length of this bending part was adjusted automatically to fit with its need for bending. [4] The system showed the whole lattice and the dimensions for each timber part in a single drawing. In parallel to the visual simulation, the system constructed production drawings and toolpaths for the fabrication with CNC-milling.

Timber Curtain demonstrate that data collection, conversion of data to a customised digital system and activation of computer-controlled machining can help to establish a holistic design-to-production process.