In Radicant, we work with bone glue, a secondary resource from the meat industry. The bone glue acts as a binder into which we mix cellulose fibres from other waste streams; bark, paper, recycled linen (cotton) and seagrass. It is robotically 3D printed in a leaf-life filigree pattern. Radicant asks what the design, fabrication and creation of a bio-based architecture can be. It is made as a bespoke panelling system 3D printed from different compositions of biopolymer. The tiles are materially graded composing different waste stream materials creating a six metre tall branched interweave. The wall piece is designed to be used as an interior wall or cladding. Due to its pentagonal geometry, we can assume that it can be produced and tiled.
Tom Svilans is an Innochain PhD fellow at CITA in Copenhagen. His research focuses on the link between industrial timber fabrication and early-stage architectural design. Through hands-on prototyping, coding, and industry secondments, he looks at how certain material properties and behaviours of timber can be leveraged to create smarter and more innovative design solutions.
He focuses on free-form glue-laminated timber as a specific area of inquiry, and proposes that through a reconsideration of existing processes – a reshuffling of steps such as bending, gluing, and machining – and more material-aware design modelling methods, we can arrive at new, innovative, and more accessible free-form timber structures.
He is partnered with White Arkitekter and Blumer-Lehmann AG. Before joining CITA, Tom was a Teaching Fellow at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London where he specialized in robotics and digital fabrication, and he was Technical Director at ScanLAB Projects where he was responsible for workflow development, creative direction, and international fieldwork.
The Eco-Metabolistic Architecture project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 101019693).
The Eco-Metabolistic Architecture project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 101019693).