However, the industrial sawing process of cutting unique trees into standardized panels generates a large amount of wood waste. A.I. Timber offers an alternative, using A.I. and digital machining tools to scan a set of raw logs, flat saw them into boards, and identify the optimal sequence to fit them together. The process results in timber panels with tesselating boards that match one another like puzzle pieces while shaving off as little of the tree as possible. The innovation could reduce wood waste in cross-laminated timber (CLT) production by up to 30%, but it is also beautiful: the irregular geometry celebrates the original shape of the tree, using the artificial to bring out the brilliance of the natural.

The first prototype of A.I. Timber was produced in Shanghai in the summer of 2023 as part of the DigitalFUTURES conference organized by Tongji University professor Philip Yuan. A proof-of-concept structure, a small, triangular pavilion, was constructed in collaboration with students from Tongji University and MIT researcher Nikita Klimenko and displayed at Tongji University’s gallery between August and September 2023.