Woodflow is a design-to-manufacturing technology developed by Strong By Form that aims to bring the natural intelligence of tree structures to engineered wood. These innovators combine digital design, structural optimization and digital fabrication to produce structural wood-based composite parts. This process enables freeform lightweight parts capable of replacing materials with higher CO2 footprints such as concrete or steel on diverse applications.
Strong By Form are currently developing with a timber construction company in Germany a solution for a Woodflow-composite slab that aims to save up to 30% of concrete and 70% of wood compared to conventional timber-concrete composite slabs. Likewise, they are working on bringing optimized rigid nodes connectors in Woodflow so that the use of metals on frame joints can be avoided. This would result in structurally more integrated joints that could be lighter, 100% wood-based and with lower CO2 footprint.
A particularity of this technology is that it is based on a design-to-manufacturing platform. This means that the process from the design of the component to the production is fully controlled by one team, going so far as to define the architecture of the fibers of the material. This “parametric” software allows for integration with BIM design platforms and with any CNC production system.
Strong By Form’s vision is that through the development of BIM plugins, architects will be able to explore the application of Woodflow products in their designs, and that via cloud, they can connect to servers to obtain structural memory, costs, and eventually make the purchase-manufacturing order form.
