Hypnotic gifs animate traditional Japanese joinery techniques

Timber joints slot together in these Tetris-like gifs – the work of a young Japanese man so obsessed by joinery techniques he set up a Twitter account dedicated to the cause.

Named The Joinery, the account bills itself as the complete 3D guide to Japanese joinery styles.

Its creator has a day job in the car industry but is an avid collector of woodwork books.

Finding the complex instructions hard to visualise, he set about creating a set of gifs that illustrate the different ways that pieces of wood can be bonded together – without the use of glue, nails or screws.

He has now posted 80 such gifs to The Joinery, which has attracted over 20,000 followers since it was set up in February 2016.

"I was fascinated by the traditional techniques of creating strong bonds without the use of nails or adhesive," he told Japanese design blog Spoon & Tamago. "I want to organise all the joinery techniques and create a catalogue of them all."

The gifs are created using Autodesk's Fusion 360 software, which can be used for modelling, animation and simulation.

The woodwork techniques documented can be used to create anything from house frames to furniture, but have now largely been put out of use with the prevalence of power tools.

But The Joinery's creator said digital fabrication and robotic construction offer an unlikely lifeline for old-fashioned carpentry techniques.

He said: "3D printing and woodworking machinery has enabled us to create complicated forms fairly easily."

London's Architecture Association school has recently launched a specialist robotics course, which has a focus on timber construction.

Imagery courtesy of The Joinery and Spoon & Tamago.