Waste Wood and Cement Composite Sculpture: An Analysis of Embodied Carbon and Compressive Strength.

This paper examines the relationship of embodied carbon and compressive strength of wood waste cement composite cylinders utilized in a sculpture located in an interior public walkway, constructed by hand with readily available tools. The sculpture entitled Cordwood Redux, was used to examine the relationship between cement and waste wood ratios on compressive strength and embodied carbon. As both an art piece and an experiment the work allowed our team to begin to establish the limitations of a material such as cement bonded wood fiber blocks without the use of high-tech production facilities or chemical mineralization processes. The resulting strength to embodied carbon ratio allowed us to identify challenges and opportunities in the utilization of non-standardized wood waste from a local wood shop which varied in particle size from wood chips of a ¼” to sawdust.