The parametric climbing wall system developed by ONL [Oosterhuis_Lénárd] in cooperation with climbing specialists Mountain Network and engineering firm Arcadis, has won the Wood Innovation Award 2012. The developed parametric design system, in which design and production are directly linked, adds to a more widespread application of wood as a building material, according to the judges. The system has been used for the climbing walls in the two climbing centres of Mountain Network in Dordrecht and Amsterdam.

“The parametric design system connects construction and computation techniques. This way it is possible to create complex folded scale structures in wild shapes in a fast and efficient manner. The system is momentarily applied to climbing walls. The jury foresees a wide range of wood applications with the use of this system.” With these words, the chairman of the jury and professor of wood structures at the Technical University of Eindhoven, Jos Lichtenberg handed the Wood Innovation Award, called “de Krul”, to ONL [Oosterhuis_Lénárd].

The Wood Innovation Award ceremony took place during the Dutch national Wood day, on Wednesday the 28th of November in the Nieuwe Kerk in The Hague. The Wood Innovation Award is an initiative of the Dutch Centre for Wood, to reward innovative wood applications in the building industry.

ONL has developed a parametric design and production systems, in close cooperation with Arcadis and Mountain Network, that allows for the creation of free-form, self-supporting scale structures in wood. The system is fully automated to deal with the problematic changes in the direction of the loads that occur in the nodes and contact surfaces of complex free-form geometries. The construction is designed to minimize the number contact areas, in order to make the complex system easy to build. The optimisation opportunities inherent in the system allow for large spans and canopies. The developed system makes secondary structures redundant, as every element is an integral part of the construction. This offers a broad range of new possibilities for architectural design using wood structures, within a limited budget and time frame. Lichtenberg: “The Jury foresees a wider range of possibilities for wood applications  in a completely new form by using this system. By using engineered wood products like Cross Laminated Timber this design method could really take-off into the public domain.”