Newark, New Jersey, USA
Wavy (sinusoidal) beetle-kill ash wood boards are cut on a custom robotic sawmill developed by the designers and joined into lightweight, porous panels to create a new lightweight structural panel systems.
Crinkle Cuts by After Architecture won an American Architecture Award 2025 from The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design.
Sinusoidal curves are oscillating waves that have been deployed as structural walls across time and space, from ancient Egypt to Thomas Jefferson’s Academical Village. The curving geometry helps surfaces resist lateral forces and allows for thinner walls.
Crinkle boards leverage sinusoidal curves for the construction of structural panels. Crinkle boards aggregate into lightweight, porous panels designed for rapid assembly with unskilled labor.
Advances in robotic manufacturing allow for the geometry of timber elements to be reimagined. A novel robotic bandsaw sawmill developed by the authors combines the mobility and accessibility of a trailer-mounted bandsaw sawmill with computer numerical control (CNC) and actuated blade guides, allowing for cutting capabilities that expand beyond the flat plane and enable the cutting of ruled surfaces.
The robotic sawmill makes it possible to cut crinkle boards: two-dimensional sinusoidal toolpaths are cut along the log, then the log is rotated and cut again to produce boards curved in plan and section. Crinkle Cuts is the second application of the robotic sawmill and the first to produce units that are non-planar in two directions.
Crinkle Cuts take an industrial approach to robotic manufacturing, producing serial, uniform units that can be scaled up and deployed to wider contexts. Because the robotic sawmill moves like a wave through the log, crinkle boards offer a unique grain patterning that expands the classic options of plain, quarter, rift, and rotary sawn methods to include sinusoidal sawn.
A demonstration pavilion takes form as a simple rectangular volume composed of 4 walls of stacked crinkle boards. Door and window openings are located on opposite corners of the pavilion, so that there are only 3 input lengths of wall panels: 3, 4.5, and 7.5 feet long. These dimensions maximize 9 input logs, 5 measuring 8 feet and 4 measuring 5 feet long. The mix of uniform and live edge pieces are mapped onto interlocking top and bottom sections of the pavilion.
The demonstration pavilion was constructed using beetle kill ash, identified by the sinusoidal path the ash borer tattoos. The beetle markings on the live edge units pair strikingly with the crinkle geometries.
The live edge and grain of crinkle cut boards each offer unusual surface effects and material readings. Because the robotic bandsaw sawmill moves like a wave through the log specimen, crinkle cut boards sometimes result in a unique grain patterning that expands the traditional grain readings of plain, quarter, rift, and rotary sawn methods.
Architects: After Architecture LLC.
Design Team: Katie MacDonald and Kyle Schumann
General Contractor: Before Building Laboratory
Client: New Jersey Institute of Technology
Photographs: Courtesy of the Architects
