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This thesis aims to build and design free form structures, with bent and interlocked solid timber teeth beams. The timber teeth beam technique, developed by master carpenter Hans Ulrich Grubenmann, is capable of interlocking bent solid wood beams at a defined curvature. The resulting geometry is determined by a carved teeth pattern on the long side of straight manufactured beam components. The technique had barely been used since the development of glulam beams, which were at the time cheaper to fabricate than interlocked teeth beams. With contemporary fabrication methods like CNC Machinery and robotic fabrication teeth beams can be fabricated far more efficient than in the time of their invention. Using integrated digital design to fabrication workflows this thesis aims to not only reconsider single teeth-beams, but furthermore to develop the teeth beam technique towards an integration into complex architectural and potentially doubly curved complex shapes. Therefore, the development of beam overcrossings as well as the development of assembly methods build an important part of this thesis. Fabricating teeth beam components as flat elements reduces the fabrication complexity significantly and additionally allows an efficient transportation. Furthermore, this thesis as a purely geometrical approach aims to use neither glue or glued wood products nor screws. This makes the proposed system disassemblable and the wood potentially reusable. Therefore, b-CTC is allocated within the field of sustainable and ecological architecture.
ITECH M.Sc. Thesis Project 2019: b-CTC-bent - Computational Tooth Construction
Miro Bannwart
Thesis Advisers: Hans Jakob Wagner, Simon Bechert
Thesis Supervisor: Prof. Achim Menges
Second Supervisor: Prof. Jan Knippers