“Curvas” is a Wooden bridge, all constructed by using “Glulam” wood technology.

Glulam is Laminated wood, bent and curved by CNC machines. The entire bridge was designed in Grasshopper Using the plugin “Tas” by Tom Slivans.

Glulams unable us to build complex wooden forms and structures.

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The project started by a research for a program and a references for the design

We have decided that our program is a Peer or Bridge and that we want to use the material and technology features and take it all the way to their extreme.
We wanted to produce a real project that we could produce at the end of the course.
We chose the concept of the “Turos“shape, as it contains many circles that can produce a base for a interesting curve system to drive the design of the bridge

We began to play with the curves of the torus and divide them until we got to the following shapes:

After getting the shape we wanted, we were testing and trying to understand what the flow of people would be on the bridge and how it goes out and penetrates the shoreline into the water

The bridge is divided into 4 sections; (1) A pair of lower support beams, (2) A pair of central deck beams, the (3) Deck beams themselves that serve as a substructure that connects the curved fence railings to the rest of the bridge, and the  (4) Curved fence railings that create the visibility and a truss.
In addition, the bridge has  a system of tension cables that are connected to the ground by a concrete foundation    

We analyzed the woods curvature bending started the Problem solving process

We divided the whole bridge into three parts: 2 easy parts (Green) and one hard part (Red). This solved a lot of problems for us.
In this division, we made the transportation of the bridge parts easy (The longest beam is about 13 meters), all the bridge parts are easy to assemble on site, and finally we isolated the difficult parts for production to small segments and thus reduced costs of production

Because the bridge is exposed to moisture, and stands harsh weather conditions, we performed a wood grain exposure analyzes, thus formulating a protection strategy from moisture and a maintenance plan. 

We chose the Acetylation method for protecting the wood. Whats Acetylation? Basically it’s Subjecting a softwood to a vinegar, which turns it into a hardwood by preventing the cells in the wood from being able to absorb water.

The project was designed as part of  The Master in Advanced Architecture at IAAC, In the Digital Woodcrafting course,

Led by Faculty Tom Slivans.

A project by Daniel Nahmias and Matin Darabi.