This impressive, 14-meter tall wooden tower in Stuttgart, Germany showcases a new self-shaping wood process, unlike previous wood bending techniques.
Created by Stuttgart’s Institute for Computational Design and Construction (ICD) and the Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (ITKE), the curving form is caused during the wood’s natural shrinking and bending processes, which are harnessed to bend just so.
“The tower is constructed from 12 curved cross-laminated timber building components produced using an experimental self-shaping manufacturing process. This process was invented in 2018 by researchers at the University of Stuttgart and Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology.
The self-shaping or self-bending of the wood is enabled by the smart assembly of flat, bi-layered plates where one layer is designed to intentionally shrink or swell with changing moisture but is restricted by the other layer while paralele fiber orientation.
This results in extensive “self” shaping analogous to the Bimetallic strip. The shaping can be controlled based on the composition of the bilayer.”
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