RE:PROGRAMMING WOOD

RE:PROGRAMMING WOOD esplores how computational design and robotica fabrication can trasform timber from a consumable resource into a reprogrammable material system. Although wood is renewable and stores carbon, its use in construction i still largely shaped by linera cycles of extraction, assembly, and disposal.
Developed by SDU CREATE at the University of Southern Denmark, the exhibition proposes an alternative model in witch timber remains in circulation across multiple lifecycles. Through disassembly, reprocessing, and redeployment, existing wood can be continuously adapted for new architectural uses, reducing waste, limiting demand for virgin resources, and extending carbon storage over time.

A series of full scale research prototypes demonstrates how reclaimed timber, irregular stock, short off cuts, and production residues can be transformed into structural systems and new composite materials through data driven design and advanced fabrication.

The exhibition RE:PROGRAMMING WOOD curated by zarcola architetti extablished a relationship between the quantity of recycled timber used for the prototypes and the corresponding amount of new timber conserved, therebe making the saved material perceptible. The elements are suspended using winches and paired with equivalemt counterwheights made of commercial lumber.

The entire installation is conceived as temporaty and reversible, in line with the project's principles of circularity. The materials, left unprocessed and assembled without drilling or cutting, are conceived as borrowed elements, so that they may be returned and reintroduced into the market at the end of the exhibition.