“The Future of Timber” – Rhino User Meeting at Blumer Lehmann
September 18 - September 19
“The Future of Timber” – Rhino User Meeting at Blumer Lehmann
Gossau, Switzerland
September 18-19, 2025
The Future of Timber – Rhino User Meeting 2025 is a two-day event hosted by Blumer Lehmann in collaboration with McNeel Europe, bringing together leading architects, engineers, digital fabricators and researchers to explore cutting-edge developments in timber design, computational workflows and fabrication innovation.
This event offers a platform for high-quality exchange across research, education, industry and design practice – fostering conversations about sustainability, advanced digital tools and the future of timber architecture.
18 September 2025
Location: Blumer Lehmann Headquarters, Gossau, Switzerland
Each session will feature international speakers from leading offices, research institutes and fabrication labs, followed by open discussions and panels.
- Patrick Lüth (Snøhetta): Spaces for People: The Atmosphere of Timber
- Ursula Frick (Design-to-Production): Grain Meets Algorithm: Designing Timber for Digital Fabrication
- Erik Zanetti (DDF/KIT): Transforming Waste Wood: Digital Upcycling Strategies for Novel Building Components
- Tiziano Derme (MAEID / ETH Zurich): Frontiers of wood between biotechnology and construction.
- Lauren Vasey (ETHZ): TBA
- Shajay Bhooshan (Zaha Hadid Architects): TBA
- Marios Tsiliakos (Foster + Partners): From Concept to Construction: Automation and Computational Geometry in Practice
- Ljuba Tascheva and Matthew Tam (Bollinger + Grohmann): Learning from Complexity: Scaling Digital Workflows in Timber Engineering
- Kenn Clausen (3XN): in(formed) design – What is your starting point?
- Alexander Dubor (IAAC – Institute of Advanced Architecture Catalonia): Robotic Wood Craft: a dialogue between material and architecture mediated through technologies.
- Konstantinos Gavriil (SINTEF Digital): Stackable rationalization and applications to robotic timber manufacturing
- Joaquim Escoda Llorens (BFH – Berner Fachhochschule): Modular Timber Architecture as a Product: Streamlining Design-to-Production with Rhino.Compute
- Martin Alvarez (ICD Stuttgart): Impact-driven Computation: the Universal Timber Slab project
- Martin Huber (Divario Ukraine): Where hope grows among the ruins: Housing modules, oak trees and the challenges of reconstruction in Ukraine.
- Preety Anand (BIG): “Raumfachwerk”
- Pierpaolo Ruttico and Ahmed Elmaraghy (Politecnico di Milano): Prompt-to-Joint. From generative code to timber construction, where design becomes assembly.
- Koki Akiyoshi (VUILD Inc.): TBA
19 September 2025
On the second day, we invite you to get to know Blumer Lehmann better by taking a tour of the company. You will gain exciting insights into our wood-related activities, from the sawmill to Free Form production. Afterwards, we will take you to the beautiful Toggenburg region, nestled between eastern Switzerland and Lake Zurich. There, you will have the chance to visit the renowned Chäserrugg summit restaurant, designed by Herzog & de Meuron. During a cosy lunch at high altitude, there will be another chance to chat informally and exchange ideas.