Applied learning - the use of timber in architectural education

2016

2023

Due to climate change, political and societal demands for the greening of the building sector are increasing. The use of regionally renewable building materials, such as wood, is recognised as one of the main strategies whose potential cannot be fully exploited due to the lack of specialised know-how in the building sector. The present project responds to this challenge through a cross-border cooperation between five European universities. The partnership aims to conduct strategic research on the conditions necessary for the design and construction of multi-storey timber buildings, and to develop guidelines and principles to align the demands of the building sector with current academic education. The transdisciplinary elective module, developed through three international workshops and combined with innovative teaching and learning methods such as problem-based learning (PBL) and integral planning, provides students with specialized training in timber design methods and prepares them for the global requirements and changing demands in the construction industry.

This article explores an intellectual disconnection in architectural education about the conception of wood as a building material. It explores initiatives to develop in future architects a deeper consciousness of the complex ecology of timber, promoting its sustainable use in the building industry. It explores six case studies drawn from architectural education to explore the ways in which the properties that make timber sustainable are explored through research and design, and how this deep understanding is transferred to students through hands-on applications.

Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice

This is a repository copy of Incorporating Woodwork Fabrication into the Integrated Teaching and Learning of Civil Engineering Students.

Architect, 2020

Read the takeaways from the Future of Wood studio at the University of Arkansas, where students reimagined composite wood products.

New Wood Architecture: Between Contemporary and Tradition, 2019

2009

Engineering judgement and intuition are vital characteristic of the design profession. Engineering judgement and intuition are developed through experience. This experience is gained by designing a building (working with industry disciplines and the owner); analyzing the building (calculations); being part of the construction process (constructability), and walking through the final product (end user). Teaching design means, in part, developing engineering judgement and intuition. This may best be accomplished by incorporating active learning experiences. For timber and masonry buildings, the shear wall is the lateral resisting system of choice. A hands-on experience has been developed as a simple exercise in constructing shear walls and then assessing the shear walls under a lateral load. More specifically, in qualitative terms, the idea of wall rigidity is explored; actual construction experience is gained (for many students it is a first time experience in rough framing construct...

Universal Journal of Educational Research

Structures and Architecture - Bridging the Gap and Crossing Borders: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Structures and Architecture (ICSA 2019), July 24-26, 2019, Lisbon, Portugal, 2019

In the field of architecture education design thinking today is often focusing on the powerful tools of modern technology. This comprises both the increasing technological possibilities in construction and materials allowing for more complex and tolerant structural performances and the broader geometric modeling tools which not only reduce formal limitations but also call for complexity with distinctive parametric translations of any given shape. Especially the teaching of design thinking is increasingly connected to growing technological opportunities, options and visions rather than to limitations. This tendency has intensified when even architectural and constructional models are no longer build but printed omitting the only part in standard design practice which is inherently connected to the process of making. The natural translation process of a formal geometrical idea into a physical object, once incorporated in the design process as a matter of course, strongly guides the design itself. This paper presents examples of teaching construction thinking in architecture through materiality and craftsmanship to architecture students at ETH Zurich. Focusing on simple tools and basic principles students explore material systems such as natural timber, simple glulam, or ferrocement without reproducing traditional techniques but to extend their experiences to possibilities of architectural expression and structural effectivity. This has been done in different cultural contexts in mixed groups with students of other schools to also discuss different approaches of dealing with materials in construction and different scales. Four different cases will be discussed in depth to reflect the potential of experimental design and the empirical study of forms and forces.

2018

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. LE ”MANAGEMENT DE LA RELATION CLIENT” est-il un management responsable ? Yves Livian, A.G. Knorst