Category Archives: Wood, Paper & Green Building

Andrew Waugh

This week we invited Andrew Waugh, co-founder of UK-based architectural practice Waugh Thistleton, to explore low-carbon construction with a focus on wood as a building material. Together with WGSN’s Executive Editorial Direction Bethan Ryder, Andrew explains the huge possibilities of cross-laminated timber (CLT), a super-strong construction material made from layers of kiln-dried dimensional lumber, for creating happier buildings and potentially cities of the future. Waugh Thistleton Architecture has completed no less than 30 projects built with CLT in the UK and France. …“With office buildings, it’s getting easier to persuade a client that there is a cost benefit to building in timber, that you can rent timber buildings or sell timber buildings for more money, because people really enjoy being around timber. It reduces your blood pressure, makes you feel happier, reduces your stress levels and you sleep better at night in a timber building.”

Despite climate change the world’s cereal farmers have kept on delivering. …But that yield comes with a lot of low-value byproduct. The sheer volume of straw — the stalks of wheat, barley and other crops. …Now, though, a new generation of construction start-ups is proposing smarter uses for all that straw. If successful, their efforts could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and — provided policymakers do more to encourage greener building — create a second income stream for farmers. Building with straw may evoke the image of a furry aggressor and three unlucky pigs but designer Jonathan Davies, who works with UK straw bale construction company Huff and Puff, says it is a surprisingly robust material. Established in 2013, Huff and Puff designs and advises on straw bale houses, which it says are both more sustainable and slightly cheaper to build than the brick and cement equivalent.

PARIS — A crane hoisted massive oak trusses from a barge and onto Notre Dame Cathedral on Tuesday in a spectacular operation to rebuild the fire-ravaged monument and bring it back to life by December 2024. …“I think it’s a magical moment,” said Minister Clement Beaune, noting that the Seine will be at the center of the Paris Olympics in 2024. Gen. Jean-Louis Georgelin said that even the heavy traffic expected during the summer Games won’t stop work on the world-renowned cathedral. “We will work for the cathedral during the Olympics in order to be ready in December 2024,” he said. …Notre Dame, which overlooks the historic core of Paris from an island on the Seine, was consumed by flames in 2019. It was decided to rebuild the monument using methods of yore. Expert carpenters used medieval techniques to construct the trusses, which measure 14 to 16 meters wide and 12 to 13 meters high.

The Irish Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has called for Ireland to join the Timber in Construction Working Group. The Timber in Construction Working Group works to increase the use of timber by challenging regulations and standards that currently make timber use difficult. The group is also focused on boosting the use of home-grown timber. Timber in Construction Working Group brings together industry experts and Government Departments and Agencies, with an independent Chair. The Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine will be the secretariat to the group and a Chair will be appointed once the group’s membership is complete. Using timber in the built environment is crucial in reaching climate targets. Wood helps store carbon in buildings and reduces dependence on materials from non-renewable sources.

Leading fire engineering consultancy, OFR Consultants working in collaboration with the Structural Timber Association (STA) is offering the wider industry valuable clarity on the fire safety design of mass timber buildings. Publishing its research into cross-laminated timber (CLT) compartment fire behaviour … OFR set out to establish the relationship between different building heights, uses and consequence classes as well as performance expectations of structures in the event of fire. Recognising that the main challenges for the industry in delivering mass timber buildings has been due to confusion on the routes to compliance with the Building Regulations, in addition to what evidence designers should provide when seeking to demonstrate how they comply, the new revised guidance provides important information for designers and building control bodies. It allows parties to approach the design of mass timber buildings with consistent expectations of what types of solutions and analysis should be expected based on a building’s height and use.

Marking a significant development in the wood panel industry in India, Greenply Industries, one of India’s largest interior infrastructure brands with over 30 years of experience in manufacturing a comprehensive range of plywood, Medium-Density Fibreboard (MDF), block boards, decorative veneers, flush doors, and other allied products, today announced that its state of the art MDF unit at Vadodara, Gujarat has achieved the prestigious Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Forest Management (FSC-FM) certification, setting an industry milestone as the first MDF facility in India to attain this certification. Greenply has also attained the FSC– FM (Forest Management) Certification from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) for its sustainable plantation unit located in Tizit, Nagaland in the year 2021. … The FSC-FM certification serves as a testimony to Greenply’s commitment to reducing its environmental footprint and contributing to a greener future in the interior infrastructure industry.

Analysis: increased use of timber in construction is key to both meeting housing demand and being environmentally sustainable. …we are seeing more and more energy-efficient buildings being constructed. If we look at the buildings we live and work in, the construction and operation of buildings contribute to approximately 37% of national emissions, 23% are operational emissions and 14% are embodied emissions. …Essentially, we are using high-emitting products to make our buildings more efficient and cancelling out some of the benefits. Here lies an opportunity to increase the use of timber in construction, particularly when examined in the context of the housing crisis and development required to meet housing demands. …Compared to conventional construction materials, the extraction and production of structural timber require a relatively low amount of energy. Furthermore, using timber products allows for long-term carbon storage in buildings over their lifespan, while sustainably managed forests continue to store more carbon from the atmosphere.

We Brits love bricks. But, combine natural stone with structural timber and you have a recipe for decarbonising construction. A 4kg brick’s embodied carbon will release 0.96kg to 2.88kg of CO2. A cubic metre of brick masonry releases between 480kg and 1,440kg of CO2 emissions per m3. …How about stone? The average quarry will use 2,500 litres of diesel for cutting equipment to extract 208m3 in a day, releasing 32.5kg of carbon per m3 – just 6.8 per cent of the emissions of the best and 2.3 per cent of the worst bricks. If the quarry uses electrical equipment powered by renewable energy, the CO2 released is negligible. …Why stop there? If your project is under 11m tall it can be built from timber throughout, with exposed cross-laminated timber (CLT) or dowel-laminated timber (DLT). This method of construction drops the construction cost of materials, labour and programme/prelims by between 20 and 25 per cent. 

SWEDEN — A 105-meter wind turbine tower made of wood, the tallest of its kind, is being built in Sweden by the wood technology company Modvion. The tower will be the company’s first commercial installation and is being built for the energy company Varberg Energi, in the municipality of Skara in Sweden. …By switching to a wooden tower, carbon emissions are reduced dramatically during manufacturing while the material itself stores carbon. The result is a carbon negative component, storing more CO2 than is emitted during production. The laminated wood that the modules are made from has a better strength-to-weight ratio than the types of steel used for wind turbine towers, enabling lighter towers. The patented modular design allows for simple transportation on standard roads, without the need for lengthy permit procedures. The technology enables cost-effective and tall towers compared to traditional steel towers.

NORTH LONDON, UK — Designed by architect Bennetts Associates, the 2 Copper Square project relies on an engineered timber frame and will use off-site construction to set industry-leading targets for embodied carbon reduction, operational efficiency and user wellbeing. The big timber office project site will sit next to the newly-opened Claremont Park, and alongside two major new public squares that will act as a gateway to the rest of the neighbourhood. …The planning approval has been granted as activity at Brent Cross Town continues to progress with five buildings, including residential and student rooms, already under construction, alongside associated infrastructure. …Matt Flood, development director for Brent Cross Town, said: “Delivering majority-timber buildings in the UK is ambitious, and therefore can be challenging, however, it’s important for a zero-carbon future that we continually innovate.

SWITZERLAND — The paper packaging used for some of Lindt’s products has green fibres running through it. More than just a splash of colour, the green is actual grass to replace some of the wood normally used to make the paper. The change is the result of years of research carried out by German paper manufacturer Creapaper and partly funded by the EU in a project called Grass Paper. …Creapaper uses grass to make a pulp that can then be used by mills to produce paper or cardboard, which is mainly sold as packaging material. It’s generally a mixture of 30% grass pulp and 70% wood, which could save large numbers of trees. ….One tonne of grass pulp requires about 10 litres of water, whereas the same amount of wood pulp would take around 1 500 litres. The result for Creapaper is a green-tinted packaging paper. 

In Finland, interior design maker Woodio, which recently attracted interest in the design world for a wood composite toilet—has raised €16.2 million to fund its international expansion. …Woodio uses aspen in chip form and chips generated from side-streams of the forest industry as its main raw material. Unlike the manufacturing process of traditional ceramic bathroom fixtures, the production of Woodio’s wood composite products consumes very little water and does not involve energy-intensive processing steps. The carbon footprint of a wash basin made from Woodio’s biomaterial is up to 80% smaller compared to an equivalent-sized ceramic basin. At the same time, Woodio’s material is durable and lightweight, and the products made from it are easy to install and maintain. The newly secured funding will be used to make a significant investment in scaling Woodio’s business in Finland along with accelerating international expansion.

One of Poland’s leading architectural studios is set to conquer Switzerland after unveiling plans for their latest masterpiece, a mixed-use project set in the heart of Unterschachen. Designed by BXB studio Bogusław Barnaś, the 1,050 sq/m building has been fittingly titled The Swiss House and will incorporate commercial, residential, tourist, and office spaces. …Consisting of three layers …the first features a concrete base which… seeks to “protect and anchor” the building to the steep slope that it’s built on. “The second layer of the Gotthard-style house is a timber log structure, which we have translated into a contemporary design using cross-laminated timber (CLT) in our building,” says the studio. Lastly, when it comes to traditional Gotthard houses, the third defining element consists of timber frames with roof trusses covered in slate stone. When clustered together, these create a dynamic, zig-zag effect that has come to almost define the look of rural Switzerland.