ETH Zürich  |  DARCH  |  ITA  |  Structural Design 
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Crafting Wood
Interweaving its Past, Present and Future


Su 23. – Sa 29.10.2022 | max. 12 participants | Cost range B |
Transportation, accommodation, visits, materials for the building workshop and reader included.
Local partner: tsm|step - Scuola per il Governo del Territorio e del Paesaggio, Trento


Poster

Wood is one of the oldest building materials that humankind crafted in different contexts and scales. It strongly contributed to the rich building culture in the Alpine regions. Its characteristics made wood a construction material with almost no limits in shape and size. Within the last decades, the timber industry has undergone drastic technological changes. Nowadays, manufacturing is characterized by a combination of manual craftsmanship, advanced digital fabrication techniques, and often a high degree of pre-fabrication.

The goal of the Seminar Week is to explore the culture of crafting wood from various interdependent perspectives in Trentino - South Tyrol (Italy). Through visits, we will explore the rich tradition of Alpine craftsmanship and discuss how the processing of wood has changed with the raise of the digital era. Moreover, we will try to understand how this transformation has been influencing architecture. To complete and enhance this understanding, a small building workshop will take place at the end of the week. Timber-to-timber connections will be produced with simple manual tools.

The Seminar Week will be taking place in and around Trento. The program intends to include excursions to a forestry school, a sawmill, a hike to visit Alpine traditional timber structures, the atelier of a violin maker as well as contemporary timber manufacturers and constructions.

Chair of Structural Design & RAPLAB
Prof. Dr. Joseph Schwartz
Giulia Boller - boller@arch.ethz.ch
Alessandro Tellini, Christian Egli, Henry Welch

last modified 1.9.2022