GRIP, Internships Abroad Material of the Future

CAUH - Buenos Aires, Argentina

"So wood really is quite good. Back before we had all this steel technology, people were pretty well off with wood. They knew what they were doing. You might laugh at a wooden bicycle, but it's not that bad," remarked my material selection professor last semester. On the screen in front of the class, a plot showing the strength vs. density of various materials revealed to us that wood was, indeed, not all that bad. In that same class, we spent a few PowerPoint slides on the structure of wood and remarked on how smart the Wright brothers were to build their first airplane out of wood. While wood is a nice material, with the 21st-century realm of structural materials, I thought that we can do better. If the Wright brothers only had the lightweight aluminum alloys and composite materials we have today. And so, aside from that class and a 20-second remark on the structure of plywood in another class, wood takes a backseat in most materials science curricula, while the iron-carbon phase diagram is burned deep into the heart of every student. You'd be hard-pressed to find a student who concluded that some type of wood is optimal for their materials selection final project, but plenty have contemplated the comparison between aluminum alloys 6010-T6 and 6022-T62. To wood's credit, it does have the advantage of not pumping our atmosphere full of carbon dioxide during processing, and we can take advantage of that to make more environmentally friendly forks. 

At CAUH, a small architecture startup in Argentina, wood is the material of the future. This startup is part of a movement which aims to bring wood construction into the 21st century in the name of economic, social, and environmental sustainability. Inspired by European projects (the US, according to my coworkers, is lagging here), CAUH hopes to spearhead the modernization of wood construction in Argentina and in Latin America as a whole. My internship supervisor and coworkers send me articles and Ted Talks on the advantages of wood, and the arguments are convincing. In a world where the only things growing as fast as cities seem to be temperatures, sustainable construction with a triple bottom line is crucial. If wood can help, I'm all for looking into it. 

So how exactly do we modernize wood construction? The architects of CAUH take pages from 21st-century efficiency, personalization, and computerization: machines can be programmed to quickly and cheaply cut wood into pieces which can be assembled quickly, cheaply, and simply on-site. Sort of like IKEA furniture, but for buildings. Meanwhile, a modular system allows each building to be somewhat personalized. Similar companies have developed software that allows the client to play around and have a hand in designing their own home. 

Perhaps materials scientists can help on a deeper, more fundamental level. How can we provide companies like CAUH with the best wood possible? Stronger, cheaper, more environmentally friendly, the whole shebang. We've mastered this with other materials; for instance, the strength of metal alloys owes itself to decades of research into their structure. I wonder to what degree we've done that with wood; what have the results been, and what is left to do? While I can't say that I'm determined to dedicate my life to the study of wood--I am interested in many things--I can thank CAUH for sparking some interest in it, and making me reexamine my assumptions about the role of wood in our materials universe.