Developing The MLJ: A Variable and Scalable Alternative to Conventional Bent Wood Lamination Formworks
Open Access
- Author:
- Maalej, Esmael
- Graduate Program:
- Architecture
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- March 20, 2025
- Committee Members:
- Marcus Shaffer, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Benay Gursoy Toykoc, Committee Member
Frank Jacobus, Program Head/Chair
Istvan Gyulovics, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Lamination
Formwork
Scalability
Modularity
Bent Wood
Bent Lamination
Bent Wood Lamination
Jig
Tool
Technology
Low-Tech - Abstract:
- As wood construction comes back into focus as the renewable architectural material of choice in the first half of the 21st Century, an assessment of existing tools, technologies, and methods is in order. Wood lamination is a centuries-old practice found in everything from ancient chariots to furniture. Bent wood lamination is equally common, found in iconic design objects, furniture, and in sustainable wooden architecture. Recent architectural projects like Shigeru Ban’s massive Swatch Omega facility in Switzerland, and Marks Barfield Architects’ Cambridge Mosque in England, feature the innovative use of bent wood as a sustainable structural material – one that is simultaneously lyrical in form and delightfully ornamental. A cursory look at the technologies of wood lamination shows a range of problems, including material waste, technological stagnation, form limitation, and expensive technologies that increase product and building costs and make bent lamination inaccessible to projects with modest budgets, countering wood’s sustainable social and economic standing. The machinery currently used to mass manufacture compound bend laminate furniture and bent structural timbers are sometimes multi-million-dollar machines. Traditional bent lamination forms – two-part molds and/or a series of curved forms that wood is laid up onto – are often single-form tooling constructions (no variation in form). The tooling investment results in a single form that is at least repeatable, but not variable. Parametric lamination projects have begun to toy with applying manufacturing robots and variable coding/variable forming to wood lamination, but these projects require expensive machinery, skilled labor (coding) and may be limited in scale. The research detailed in this thesis focuses on the development of an alternative bent wood lamination methodology that extends bent wood laminations beyond the limitations of single-use two-part molds found in traditional lamination technologies and tooling. This alternative methodology is explored through the form of a jig with the ability to produce a variety of wooden geometries or “bent lines”. The work demonstrates both variability and scale-ability by utilizing the jig’s modularity to create various reconfigurable operations predetermined through an inherent systems logic, one designed to produce a great variety of possible results. Still in early days of development, the jig (currently made of cnc’d plywood parts) targets a range of bent wood production that includes small-scale bench top work at one end of the spectrum and, potentially, larger robotically assisted industrial construction on the other. A current assessment of the tooling and associated bending method includes positives and negatives: the jig is relatively easy to make, produces quality bent wood components, is scalable, and variable. On the other hand, scaling up may mean investing in milled aluminum or plastic jig parts, and other lamination related issues to resolve. The most positive feature of this novel system may be that the jig represents a period-appropriate accessible technological innovation that can benefit the individual craftsperson in these D.I.Y. times, and it simultaneously accessorizes parametric wood design with a bending method that is readily digitized/robotic.