This paper gives a brief overview of the static and the dynamic analyses of sandwich beams and sandwich plates composed of two elastic layers connected by a soft core. We show the strict correspondence between the sandwich beam, sandwich plate, and the analogous composite beam and composite plate problem with partial interaction. The beam problem is governed by a sixth-order differential equation in space for the deflection, whereas the plate problem is governed by a tri-Laplacian equation for the deflection, as first shown by Hoff in 1950 for symmetrical three-layer component (sandwich plate or composite plate theory with partial interaction). It is shown herein that the tri-Laplacian partial differential equation is also valid for general unsymmetrical sandwich plate or partially composite plate. In the limit cases, i.e., for non-composite action and for full-composite action, the beam model reduces into the Euler–Bernoulli beam model and the plate model into the Kirchhoff–Love model. Boundary layer phenomena may be predominant in the asymptotic stiff problem. The nonlocal bending moment–curvature of the sandwich beam (or composite beam with partial interaction) is analysed, and extended to a nonlocal Marcus bending moment–curvature for the composite plate theory. The consistency of the tri-Laplacian plate theory is commented, regarding the bi-Laplacian Reissner sandwich plate theory, which neglects the bending stiffnesses of each face layer. The paper finally presents results for the static bending and vibrations of sandwich beams and plates on simply supported boundary conditions, with a discussion on asymptotic limit cases.

Tall buildings with a high occupancy need to resist disproportionate collapse caused by unforeseen exposures, e.g. terrorism or accidents. If a damage has occurred in a building, the damage propagation can be halted if the structure is robust, i.e. it provides alternative load paths (ALPs). The ALPs of platform-type cross-laminated timber buildings have not been studied in detail on the component level. The goals of this paper are thus to elicit which ALPs may develop on single storeys in a corner bay of a platform-type cross-laminated timber building, and to study how the various building components contribute to the ALPs. For this purpose, a non-linear quasi-static pushdown analysis was conducted in a finite element model of an 8-storey building after a wall removal. Friction, fastener failure, timber failure and large displacements were accounted for. Four different ALPs were identified at various storeys and their mechanisms were described. The results could be used to improve the capacity of the ALPs and make platform-type cross-laminated timber buildings more robust in the future.

Wood plays an important role in the construction industry to meet the challenges of the climate, finite natural resources and energy consumption. It plays a significant role in environmental and climate effects on society as well as the well-being of its individual citizens.

Multi-storey wooden buildings in the Nordic region have proven to be the main business opportunity in the new bioeconomy. However, it is emphasized that the technical challenges must first be overcome and access on design tools come to the same level as the equivalent for concrete and steel.

The future potential for increased construction of multi-storey wooden buildings has also recently been studied. It emphasizes that based on demographics (strong population growth and strong urbanization), climate (climate impact reduction) and employment (keeping employment at a high level with a “reasonable” distribution of jobs between urban and rural areas), industrial timber construction can contribute as follows until 2025: (1) Build capacity for industrial timber construction to be able to deliver 50 % of the multi-storey houses in wood on the Swedish market; (2) Create 8 000 new jobs in prefabrication companies and help relocate 6 000 jobs from big cities to the countryside.

Business development focuses on identifying opportunities and developing resources for new, expanded or changed business operations. For the construction industry, this means to create business models for the building process, including design, manufacturing and construction, and involve consultants, contractors and small and large suppliers.

Business models are linked to current technical activities. When business models and technologies interact, this connection needs to be a starting point. We need to link industrial construction with companies’ business models. Business models for industrialized construction of multi-storey wooden houses that are in focus can provide a better understanding of its potential for competitiveness and profitability. Industrialized construction is also a driving force in shaping new or changing business models.

The work comprises of three main activity areas: (1) the technical part, (2) the business part, and (3) the application part.

Technical part: This part includes developing different types of design tools that the industry needs to produce and build multi-storey buildings in wood. Mainly within the areas (1) architecture and building design; (2) structural engineering – building systems, horizontal stabilization and sway, robustness, components and connections.

Business part: This part includes developing business models for wood building projects, especially for multi-storey wooden buildings. Especially for the industrialized manufacturing and construction processes, integration of SME’s into big wood construction projects, and interaction between the different market players.

Developing business models for industrialized multi-storey wooden buildings would include adapting a general business model to the industrialized building setting and choose the major business model elements, identify frequently used business models and model elements, and establish a good fit between the business model its model elements. The business model elements include prefabrication mode, role in the building process, end-user segments, offering, and resources for design and onsite construction.

Application part – demo and pilot projects: This part includes following up on real wood building objects under and after construction, to identify weaknesses and challenges for learning and further study. And studying the industrialization of the wood construction process from manufacturing to erecting and the digitization with respect to planning and design.

Critical issues to evaluate are:(1) Horizontal stability, robustness and building sway;(2) Business models and business elements; planning, management and interaction between participating partners (consultants, wood companies, entrepreneurs) and between main supplier (“locomotives”) and subcontractors (SME’s); and(3)     Industrialisation and digitization of the different processes.

A parallel reading of ten powerful works of conceptual and analytical originality yields a novel epistemological method based on the possibility of automated experimentation in engineering and architecture. An initial protocol for Parametric Epistemic Things, a particular kind of assemblage (as postulated by DeLanda following Deleuze & Guattari) that builds on Rheinberger’s ideas of Epistemic Things, is outlined and conceptualised to allow for the possibility of such automation. Following the interpretations of fragments from the texts, a discussion examines future potentials and identifies some of the conceptual and pragmatic thresholds to overcome in order to leverage the proposal and situate it within a general theory of science and research, while attempting to answer the question at the heart of this essay: what is the role of parametric epistemic things in contemporary evolutionary architecture?

Multi-storey cross-laminated timber (CLT) buildings are a comparatively recent construction type. Knowledge concerning the performance of CLT buildings regarding the prevention of disproportionate collapse after unforeseeable events (e.g. accidents or acts of terrorism) is not as refined as that for concrete and steel buildings. In particular, alternative load paths (ALPs) after the removal of a wall panel in platform-framed variants have not yet been studied in detail. The goal of this work was therefore to study ALPs in CLT buildings. An eight-storey bay of an existing building was evaluated by conducting a non-linear static pushdown analysis in a finite element analysis on three representative storeys. The analyses accounted for single fastener behaviour, timber crushing, friction, brittle failure and large deformations. The force–deformation behaviours elicited under the pushdown analyses were subsequently inserted in a simplified dynamic model to evaluate the transient response of the entire bay. Four ALPs were identified in this case – shear resistance in the floor panels, arching action of the walls, catenary action in the floor panels and hanging action from the roof. The dynamic analysis did not show a collapse, unless the inter-compartment stiffness was significantly reduced. The resistance mechanisms are described in this paper, which may provide information for improved building design.

“File-to-factory” processes of computer technologies is a contemporary way to both maximise efficiency throughout the building process, increase a building's performance, and be able to add interesting architectural possibilities throughout the design phase. Viewing the building as a parametric network of connected components that can be individually controlled through unique parameters may no longer be a novel architectural concept, but its application to multi-storey timber buildings is still a territory for which there are no maps. Allowing not only the notion of identicality in mechanically reproduced objects to be left behind, but replacing the idea of the object with that of the objectile, the authors investigate a novel approach that produces a set of building trajectories rather than a set of buildings, yet yields a series of buildable examples of those trajectories. This paper describes and evaluates how this series of stacked multi-storey timber buildings based on three Swedish timber structural systems can be both incorporated within a file-to-factory process, and how this gives rise to a range of new and interesting potentials to create innovative solutions throughout the entire design and manufacturing process.

A “file-to-factory” process of computer technology is applied to a real project called Zembla in the town of Kalmar, Sweden. The ground datum is used as a counterpoint to the necessary further densification of our urban nodes. It redefines the notion of sprawl, turning it into a progressive tactics for linking the city fabric to rural areas. It is a post-sustainable file-to-factory-produced timber ground-scraper that redefines the urban-rural edge of Kalmar; soaring high above ground and water, suggesting a new way of life through a new way of making city-sized buildings for the future. A plug-in grid-shell structure is designed to contain a minimal amount of timber elements, beams make up the lattice, cross-laminated panels add structural support, surfaces (boards) come together to form the living capsules. Having the structure undulate across the topography and touching the ground in as few places as possible uses the dichotomy between landscape and urbanism to allow the project to reverse today’s migration patterns, bringing the city to the people living in less densified areas. The living units are placed in into the grid. Each unit is unique and is customised to its weather and topological conditions within the grid. Some comments on grid development and slotting is also given as part of the file-to-factory process.

A “file-to-factory” process of computer technology is a way to both maximise efficiency throughout the building process, increase a building׳s performance, and be able to add interesting architectural possibilities throughout the design phase. The authors investigate a novel approach that produces a set of building trajectories rather than a set of buildings, yet yields a series of build-able examples of those trajectories. This paper evaluates how this series of stacked multi-storey timber buildings can be both incorporated within a file-to-factory process, and give rise to creating new innovative solutions throughout the entire design and manufacturing process. This process is applied to a real Swedish project called Zembla. It redefines the notion of sprawl, turning it into a progressive tactics for linking the city fabric to rural areas. It is a post-sustainable file-to-factory-produced timber ground-scraper; soaring above ground and water, suggesting a new way of making city-sized buildings for the future. A plug-in grid-shell structure is designed to contain a minimal amount of timber elements, beams make up the lattice, cross-laminated panels add structural support, surfaces come together to form the living capsules. Having the structure undulate across the topography and touching the ground in as few places as possible uses the dichotomy between landscape and urbanism, bringing the city to the people living in less densified areas. Each living unit is customised to its topological conditions within the grid.

An increasing number of multi-storey timber buildings use cross-laminated timber (CLT) for their bearing structure. Platform-framed CLT buildings consist of vertical repetitions of floors resting upon one-storey tall walls, squeezing-in the floor panels between the walls. Tall buildings need to be structurally robust because many lives would be at stake in case of a disproportionate collapse. Robustness is the ability of a system to survive the loss of components. For collapse resistance, it poses the last line of defence, after an unforeseen exposure (e.g. accident, terrorism) has already occurred and after the exposed components could not resist failure. A robust building offers alternative load paths (ALPs) which come into action when a part of the bearing structure has been removed [1].

Many alternative load path analyses (ALPA) have been conducted for tall concrete and steel buildings using the finite element method (FEM), but for timber, ALPA are still scarce. ALPs depend on the behaviour of the connections after a loss [1]. Studies on timber so far have accounted for connections in a simplified manner by lumping their aggregate behaviour into single points. Our goal is to elicit the ALPs after a wall removal in a platform-framed CLT building, study their development and quantify their capacity, to determine whether they can prevent a collapse.

We investigated a corner bay of an 8-storey platform-framed CLT building (see Figure 1) and removed a wall at the bottom storey. We studied the ALPs of each storey by pushing down the walls above the gap in a non-linear quasi-static analysis in the FE software Abaqus. We accounted for contact and friction, considered plastic timber crushing, and accounted for brittle cracking in the panels. We modelled single fasteners with connector elements which simulated the elastic, plastic, damage and rupture behaviour. We recorded the force-displacement curves, i.e. pushdown curves, for each storey and used them to conduct a dynamic analysis of the entire bay in a simplified model, as suggested by [2].

The results show that the structure could engage the following ALPs after a wall removal: I) arching action in the outer floor panels, II) arching action of the walls, III) quasi-catenary action in the floor panels, and IV) hanging action from the roof panels. The ALPs were limited by various parameters, but they sufficed to resist a collapse of the bay. We observed that the inter-storey stiffness influenced the load-sharing among storeys, which affected the structural robustness. In the compressed connections, friction, and not the fasteners, transferred most of the horizontal loads. Future research should test the squeezed-in platform joint experimentally, to quantify its capacity for transverse shear loads. We also advise to assess the inter-storey stiffness to estimate the capacity for load-sharing among storeys.

With an increasing number of storeys, timber buildings require closer attention to structuralrobustness. If a building can survive unforeseen events (e.g. accidents, terrorism), lives can be saved.The literature appears to be rather limited concerning robustness of timber buildings. This paperaims to give a brief review on robustness in general and design guidelines for timber in specific. Theresults indicate that connection design is a key aspect for robustness. Like in seismic design, by usingthe ductile capacity of connectors, the brittleness of timber can be controlled. For light timber-framebuildings, more guidelines exist than for posts and beams and cross-laminated timber, which bothseem to be similar to steel frames and precast concrete respectively regarding robustness.