Smudging: Timber Stories: Narratives of a Forest Resource

Architect Tom Svilans will discuss his project Timber Stories: Narratives of a Forest Resource, which employed digital data capturing at multiple scales and within disparate contexts to present forest as a diverse, living being rather than a plantation; “a place, an ecology, a resource, a statistic, a home, perhaps also as a dream.”
Tom Svilans is an architectural designer, design consultant, and researcher, focusing on digital fabrication, materiality, and emerging technologies. Tom is currently an Assistant Professor at CITA (Centre for IT and Architecture) at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, Denmark. His research focuses on digital design across the timber value chain - from forestry to construction - and methods of integrating new imaging and information-communication technologies in the design and fabrication of engineered timber elements. Tom holds a PhD from the Royal Danish Academy, as part of the EU-funded InnoChain research network. The PhD develops a digitally-augmented material practice for the design and manufacture of large-scale free-form timber structures. It was supported by close collaborations with leading Swiss timber contractor Blumer Lehmann AG and multi-disciplinary Scandinavian architecture practice White Arkitekter. Tom has presented and published his work internationally. Tom has taught at, among others, the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL; the Architectural Association (AA); the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC); and the Royal Danish Academy.