Sustainable High-Rise Timber Structure
SUTD final year capstone project with Weijenberg design studio
The aim of the Capstone project was to design a high-rise timber structure that is structurally stable, environmentally sustainable and has good spatial quality.
To set ourselves apart from traditional design methods, my team took a unique approach to achieve our goals. We utilised advances in timber composites with natural fibres, combined with generative design and other computation methods to achieve our targets.
With the help of optimisation softwares such as Octopus and other Rhinoceros plug-ins and adhering to our self-designed workflow shown on the left, over the course of 6 months, we were able to tweak our generative design model to help us come up with thousands of possible designs that fit our pre-determined objectives.
A visualisation of the thousands of iterations that we went through before we selected one final design to work with.
In addition to exploration of generative design techniques to aid our design process, a physical exploration of timber composites was also carried out to help bridge our physical and digital design realms.
Timber experiments were carried out on timber samples bonded with natural fibres (hemp, jute, flax & basalt) to help us better understand which composite combination would help us increase the strength of timber in our structure.
Ultimately, this knowledge would allow us to reduce the overall timber usage in our structure, reducing costs and environmental impact.
The following set of photos and videos are part of our final exhibition after 8 months of research and design, we managed to generate countless iterations and eventually settled on a design which met our design goals and achieved a certain aspect of aesthetic beauty.
Design Team (Architecture): Chan Jia Hui, Chua Rui Xiang, Daniel Yong Kaijie, Denise Nicole Lim, Anjelica Ong
Design Team (Engineering): Ng Kangraye, Patrick Khoo
Special Thanks To: Camiel Weijenberg, Prof Sam Joyce, Prof Michael Budig, Sayjel Patel, Thomas Wortmann
Design Team (Engineering): Ng Kangraye, Patrick Khoo
Special Thanks To: Camiel Weijenberg, Prof Sam Joyce, Prof Michael Budig, Sayjel Patel, Thomas Wortmann