DADA 2026

Wood Stereotomy: From Traditional Layout Techniques to Digital Fabrication

Although stereotomy has historically been associated with stonecutting, its scope extends beyond this material. In its original sense, it refers to the body of geometric knowledge used to determine the shape, cutting patterns, and contact surfaces of solids intended to be assembled. This definition fully encompasses woodworking and, more specifically, the complex practices of timber framing.

Historical literature thus distinguishes between stone stereotomy and wood stereotomy. The latter developed notably through the *art du trait*, a traditional geometric layout technique through which carpenters represent, at full scale, the geometries required to fabricate and assemble three-dimensional components. Hip rafters, valleys, complex roof framing systems, intersections, and intricate joints require a mastery of spatial geometry comparable, in principle, to that involved in stone construction.

Contemporary research explicitly revisits this concept under the terms *wood stereotomy* or *stereotomy of wood*. The term appears notably in scientific studies devoted to timber-to-timber connections, digital fabrication, CNC machining, and human–robot collaboration. In this context, stereotomy is understood as the process through which architectural geometry is translated into physically manufacturable components: defining volumes, interface geometries, layout patterns, cutting sequences, and the precision required for assembly.

This continuity between historical practices and digital tools forms the starting point of a collaboration with Sokïo, exploring the possibilities offered by robotics and the automation of timber prefabrication. The research seeks to bring together two fields that are still too often considered separately: on one hand, architectural design, geometry, and the definition of connections; on the other, the industrial processes that enable their fabrication.

Where carpenters once relied on full-scale geometric drawings and layout techniques to translate abstract geometry into physical material, parametric design environments, computer numerical control machines, and robotic systems now make it possible to perform this same translation directly from a digital model. The underlying logic remains comparable: precisely determining the geometry of each component, its interfaces, and the operations required for its fabrication so that it can become part of a larger assembly.

The collaboration with Sokïo specifically aims to explore this continuity between geometric knowledge and production capabilities. Robotics is not considered merely a tool for accelerating or automating repetitive operations, but rather a means of transforming the relationship between design and fabrication. The architectural model can progressively evolve into a fabrication model in which geometry, connections, tolerances, and machining sequences are conceived together.

The historical sequence of layout–cutting–assembly thus finds its contemporary extension in a sequence of digital modeling–robotic fabrication–assembly. This evolution does not necessarily represent a break from traditional timber-framing knowledge and craftsmanship. On the contrary, it can be understood as their continuation: while the tools change, the need to understand the geometry of materials and the relationships between the individual components of a structure remains.

Speaking of wood stereotomy, therefore, does not mean metaphorically transferring to timber a concept belonging exclusively to masonry. The term has its own historical and technical foundations in timber framing and is particularly relevant today with the development of digital and robotic fabrication.

This concept also makes it possible to move beyond the simplified opposition between so-called “tectonic” architecture, based on assembly, and “stereotomic” architecture, generally associated with mass. Historically, stereotomy is precisely a science of assembly: it examines how a complex whole can be decomposed into distinct solids whose shapes, cuts, and interfaces allow them to form a coherent structure.

In the contemporary context of mass timber, CLT, and prefabrication, this interpretation opens up a particularly fertile field of research. The collaboration with Sokïo provides an opportunity to investigate the transition from an industrial approach primarily based on the repetition of standardized elements toward a fabrication process capable of producing differentiated, geometrically specific components with comparable precision and efficiency.

Stereotomy thus becomes a framework for considering geometry, material, cutting, assembly, and fabrication simultaneously. It establishes a continuity between traditional geometric layout techniques, descriptive geometry, and contemporary robotic technologies, while opening up the possibility of a form of prefabrication in which the standardization of processes and the uniqueness of individual components are no longer necessarily contradictory.