Standard Timber Structures for Lean Architectural Design
Keywords:
Lean culture, leanWOOD, CAD, timber-building, case studyAbstract
The Finnish building stock is our most significant national asset and the construction industry an important source of income. By managing building production we affect the performance of this activity. Development is required for timber-building to compete in this market. Lean culture is one approach to optimized production. Lean construction research has defined lean and industrialized processes, identified the differences between mass-customization and mass-production, and the importance of standardization. Redesign is a recognized cause of inefficiency, typical also for complex timber buildings. Development visions include building system based design automation and modularization. This study explores pre-designed details as a means to reduce work in planning processes. The article bases on a comparative case study. Six collections of pre-designed details developed for building with timber are presented and compared regarding availability, formats, accessible material and structures. Usability in practice is assessed with one selected intermediate floor structure as a benchmark. Conclusions are that barriers exist for transnational use, in referencing systems and for the direct use of proposed details and structures in a CAD-environment. The amount of material varies greatly. However, the collections successfully act as an overview of solutions compatible with local building regulations, and the similarity of solutions offers an opportunity for European wide competition and implementation. Research leading to these results is part of the transnational WoodWisdom-Net Research Programme, project Innovative lean processes and cooperation models for planning, production and maintenance of urban timber buildings, leanWOOD.
