Indoor Walk-Over Bridge

Designed the cladding for an indoor elevated walkway in a renowned museum. The timber panels were bent and twisted to form a continuous skin over a steel structure. My contribution included deriving CNC toolpaths, developing fabrication details, and ensuring the design’s structural stability through complex geometric manipulation.

Scope of Work

Accurate rationalization of the bridge skin / cladding based on the 3D modelled design intent, for fabrication using lightweight solid timber panels.

CNC drawings for the inner carcass that supports the skin panels, attached to the inner steel structure.

Documentation for assembling the carcass and panels, also added in as an etching layer in the CNC drawings, ensuring quick and efficient assembly on-site.

The form of the canopy is parametrically developed in the same script that also exports

documentation for production. Geometric algorithms were used to account for the physical flexture of the timber panels and model the CNC drawings accurately.

A clip holds each panel on the supports by socketing into a grove milled behind the panels.

A custom C# script helps accurately and mathematically ‘flatten’ the perimeter of each panel, such that it warps and bends precisely to the target form using very few support

points. Any inaccuracies in this process would cause visible gaps or clashes between adjacent panels.

Working with scale models physically allowed for error checking and making sure the panels shingled perfectly. A 1:25 model was made using cardboard and a 1:5 model was made using MDF and zip-ties.

CNC etched markings on the panel boards helped orient and align the panels onto the clips. Drilled notches in the carcass CNC marked positions for clips to be mounted onto.