Research Colloquium at SFU’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology in Surrey presents

Oliver Neumann

Visiting from UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture

Digital Wood Fabrication in a Complex Environment

Wednesday October 4, 2006 at 1:30 pm

Room 3875, SFU Surrey Campus, third floor Central City Tower in the Research Labs

abstract

The discourse on depleting natural resources and compromised environments have led to extended research on sustainable designs methods, building practices and materials. Beyond the actual performance of building products and components, research on sustainable building increasingly focuses on the long-term effects of the production, application and life cycle of building materials on the natural environment, human inhabitation and quality of life. The expanding research has led to the development of new building products from recycled materials, to building methods and techniques that minimize the impact on existing site conditions, to self-sufficiency in energy and resource consumption and efforts to eliminate waste from the construction process and building operation.

In order to generate innovative design interventions that make a constructive long-term contribution to the preservation, maintenance and evolution of the environment, design needs to be based on a comprehensive understanding of its context. Innovative design has to resonate at the intersection of technology, material science, manufacturing processes, techniques of assembly and context. It is these fields that constitute the expanded context or complex ecology that projects need to engage.

Digital fabrication technologies in design and construction play a significant role not only in the transformation of design and building methods but figure into an extended discourse on cultural developments. Globally available technologies connect the design and building process to a broad range of long-term ecological factors by creating a correlation between political, economical and social processes and architectural techniques, geometries and organization. Through this interrelationship to economy and culture, technology and its applications are also directly related to notions of place and territory as well as to ideas of ecology.

Oliver Neumann’s current collaborative research and design studies focus on concepts of digital fabrication technologies and their applications. The proposals for a wood roof structure and a cabin illustrate the potential of a design culture that seeks innovation in a broader understanding of ecology.

bio

Oliver Neumann is an Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He holds a professional degree in architecture from the Technical University in Berlin, Germany, and a Masters in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University in New York. Prior to his research and teaching work at UBC he was the 2002-03 Oberdick Teaching and Research Fellow at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and has taught at the Hochschule fuer Technik, Wirtschaft und Kultur (HTWK) in Leipzig, Germany.

Oliver Neumann is a licensed architect with the Architektenkammer in Berlin, Germany. His research focuses on the role of digital technology in the building process and in broader speculations of emerging material culture. Current building research projects explore digital wood fabrication technologies and mass-customization processes and their spatial, ecological and cultural implications.