A group of graduate students in UB’s School of Architecture and Planning gathered with Assistant Professor Nicholas Bruscia inside Parker Hall to showcase the early progress of their Fall 2025 design research studio. The group is testing mixed-reality fabrication techniques for architectural applications.
The studio welcomed visiting scholar Lukas Kirschnick from Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, whose expertise in repurposing leftover round timber has been a key part of the research effort.
“Lukas generously shared his ongoing research and challenged the studio to engage with metal casting using digitally fabricated molds, a topic that was new to us,” Bruscia explained. “His approach to reusing discarded timber is unique, and our group project would not have been possible without his involvement.”
This timber, once likely to be discarded as firewood, was salvaged from the properties of two UB community members—a student and a professor. Now, it’s being reimagined as a valuable architectural resource.
Using a wide array of digital and analog tools in the School’s Fabrication Workshop, this group has worked to develop a set of custom, cast aluminum connections for the timber using 3D scanning, computational modeling, and a variety of digital fabrication tools and methods.
