{"id":624,"date":"2025-09-29T05:00:42","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T05:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scientificmediagroup.com\/?p=624"},"modified":"2025-10-02T16:11:31","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T16:11:31","slug":"aa-design-make-students-devise-simple-way-to-build-with-tree-forks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.scientificmediagroup.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/29\/aa-design-make-students-devise-simple-way-to-build-with-tree-forks\/","title":{"rendered":"AA Design & Make students devise simple way to build with tree forks"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/div>\n

Students from London’s Architectural Association<\/a> have developed a low-cost and easily repeatable way to build with tree forks \u2013 a type of timber<\/a> that is usually discarded as waste even though it is unusually strong.<\/span><\/p>\n

The project, titled A Forest Datum, saw the students design and build an elevated forest walkway by cutting the tree forks using a simple but adaptable jig.<\/p>\n

The jig trims the irregularly shaped tree forks to workable dimensions while still maintaining their structurally advantageous Y shape.<\/p>\n

\"Photo
The Architectural Association’s Design & Make students built with tree forks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The project took place within the AA’s Design & Make course<\/a>, which sees staff and students live and work within the industrial woodland of the university’s Hooke Park satellite campus in Dorset, England.<\/p>\n

There, the students are challenged to work with the site’s waste streams and test new ideas by fabricating experimental structures at full scale.<\/p>\n

In previous years the course has also involved low-value timbers, but co-director Emmanuel Vercruysse told Dezeen that the staff had pushed the challenge further for the 2025 cohort by focusing on small forking branches.<\/p>\n

“We know that forks are, from an engineering point of view, the strongest part of the tree, because all the grain is completely intertwined,” said Vercruysse.<\/p>\n

\"Close-up
They made an elevated walkway across their woodland campus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Usually, these parts of the tree are left on the woodland floor during industrial harvesting, but for this project, the foresters obtained them through high pruning, leaving the rest of the plant in good health.<\/p>\n

To work with the irregularly shaped forks, the students conceptualised each one as diagonally filling an invisible block of the same size and shape.<\/p>\n

\"Diagram
The tree forks are imagined to diagonally cross an invisible building block<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These blocks would be stacked against other to make a flooring structure with the forks supporting each other in a long zigzag. With this method, the tree forks can vary in shape, as long as their ends are cut in line with the block edge.<\/p>\n

To trim the forks precisely, the students devised the jig, which is essentially made of three planks of wood and several adjustable 3D-printed connectors to hold the fork in place.<\/p>\n

A sled jig, it slides along tracks beside a band saw to enable quick and precise cutting.<\/p>\n

\"Photo
A special jig determines how the forks are trimmed<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To create the walkway, the forks are pressed diagonally against timber battens and pulled tight with a tensioning system of Dyneema cables to secure the structure. The tension can be relieved to free the parts for disassembly.<\/p>\n

Vercruysse said the Forest Datum process is “highly repeatable”. It is also intentionally low-tech, even though the Design & Make staff have previously oriented towards robotics, so that it can be applied even in potentially low-income countries.<\/p>\n

“We are really excited about this project because the material is widely available,” said Vercruysse. “You don’t need any funding for it. The only thing you need is a community to build it, a bandsaw and a jig.”<\/p>\n