UB research grant to support fabrication workshop

Mark Shepard, professor in the Department of Architecture, as well as Assistant Professor Nicholas Bruscia, have been awarded a research grant from UB’s Office of International Education to test fabrication techniques for architectural applications with unused timber.

The Global Research Scholar in Residence Grant is designed to support collaborative international research on critical global issues. The program includes funding of up to $5,000 for a visiting scholar and related research activities.

Bruscia will lead the grant’s main activity – a fabrication workshop held as part of his Fall 2025 research studio. The grant will fund a weeklong visit by Lukas Kirschnick, a research associate of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and an expert on how to integrate unused timber – the smaller logs often disregarded in timber harvesting – into architectural applications.

Working under the direction of Bruscia and Kirschnick, the studio will work with a wide array of digital and analog tools in the School’s Fabrication Workshop and SMART Fabrication Factory in Parker Hall on UB’s South Campus. Their assignment will be to develop a set of custom, cast aluminum connections for the small timbers using 3D scanning, computational modeling, and a variety of digital fabrication tools and methods. Mixed reality (MR) will be employed to aid in the assembly of a small structure consisting of the unprocessed logs and metal connections to demonstrate and study the workflow.

Mark Shepard, who is jointly appointed as professor in the Department of Media Study, will take a lead in integrating students with UB’s newly revised exchange program with the Weimar university.

Bruscia, whose research ranges from mixed-reality fabrication to experimental structures arising from a focus on architectural geometry, has explored augmenting traditional handwork toward alternative timber applications in Japan, as well, and will invite those collaborators to a second, separately funded workshop later in the semester. “Increasing the value of leftover natural materials is one of many sustainable approaches to contemporary timber construction,” he says.