BranchLink
Fabricating Connectors for Discarded Branch Geometries
Duration
2022
Researcher
Hanju Seo
Affiliation
- Royal College of Art · Graduate Diploma in Product Design
Role
- Principal Investigator
- Designer & Fabricator (3D scanning, digital modelling & physical making)
- Researcher (digital gleaning, natural material systems)
A fallen branch is not waste. It carries geometry: angles, curves, and fork ratios shaped by decades of growth, load-bearing, and environmental response. That geometry is structurally specific and largely unrepeatable. BranchLink began from the observation that this geometry is also routinely discarded, and asked what becomes possible when it is not.
The project draws on the concept of digital gleaning, rooted in the Korean practice of kaegi: the gathering of what others have left behind, reinterpreted here as the capture of natural forms through digital means to produce new value. Each branch collected from the ground was 3D scanned to record its exact geometry. That data was used to generate bespoke connectors, designed to fit the specific angles and profiles of each individual piece rather than forcing irregular natural material into standardised joints. The connectors were then fabricated and assembled with the branches to produce structural configurations that would be impossible to achieve with uniform industrial timber.
BranchLink positions itself as an inquiry into what digital gleaning looks like as a design methodology: not the romanticisation of found materials, but a precise, data-driven process in which natural morphology becomes the generative input. Each branch arrives with its geometry already determined; the role of the designer shifts from specifying form to reading it, and from manufacturing uniformity to accommodating difference.
Branch collection and 3D scanning, connector design and fabrication, and assembled structural prototypes.