Category Archives: Wood, Paper & Green Building

The Architects Climate Action Network’s Save Safe Structural Timber campaign urges the UK government not to ban the use of cross-laminated timber and glulam as it could have a serious environmental impacts. Environment awareness group Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN) has launched a campaign to encourage architects to respond to the UK government’s current review of the ban on the use of combustible materials in and on the external walls of buildings, which could extend the current ban on the use of structural timber. “The campaign’s objective first and foremost is to save the safe use of structural timber from being unnecessarily banned in certain new buildings in the UK,” said Sebastian Laan Lomas and Matt Rosier of ACAN. The current consultation follows regulations introduced to limit the use of combustible materials in buildings following the Grenfell fire in 2017, in which 72 people died.

The so-called “Viking Age” lasted from roughly A.D. 790 until the Norman conquest of England in A.D. 1066. Among the factors that brought it to an end was the arrival of Christianity in Norway around A.D. 1000. The new religion spread quite rapidly. Within a century, perhaps as many as 750 wooden churches had been built throughout the country. Excepting relatively large cities, most medieval Norwegian churches were wooden. The Vikings had developed great skill in timber construction — as is illustrated by their astounding ocean-going long ships — and wood remains the preferred building material for Norwegian homes even today. Indeed, wooden churches existed throughout northwestern Europe at one time, but only Norway’s distinctive wooden “stave churches” remain.

LONDON, UK — Glenn Howells Architects, AHMM, dRMM, Waugh Thistleton and developer Urban Splash are lobbying the government not to ban structural timber under proposed rule changes on fire safety. …In response to the Grenfell tragedy, the government is consulting on further tightening restrictions on all combustible materials by prohibiting them from the external walls of any residential buildings in England and Wales, including hotels, taller than 11m. Critics claim the inclusion of timber in this proposed ban is not only unnecessary on safety grounds but would badly damage the rise of mass timber construction – seen as a crucial means of responding to the climate emergency. …The consultation was due to close on 13 April but has now been extended until 25 May. The Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN) argues that timber should be exempt from the ban.

Building wisely with wood is an efficient way to combat climate change. It’s possible to build almost anything with wood if we develop our expertise and adjust our attitudes, an expert says. …Instead of flight shame, perhaps we should be feeling building shame—or at least looking for more sustainable construction solutions. …Finnish home-builders love timber: some 90% of single-family homes are built from wood. …The carbon footprint of constructing a concrete multi-storey building is 75% higher than that of a wooden structure. …studies have found that people experience wood-clad spaces as two degrees warmer than spaces, which are exactly as warm but clad with other materials. …Lignin can… be used to replace fossil materials… Aalto University researchers are developing it into …glues… Lignin can also be utilised … raw material for bioplastics. …By producing higher value-added products, it would be possible to double the value of exports while consuming the same amount of wood.

Matthew Linegar

Buildings and building materials are major contributors to carbon emissions. Engineered timber offers a sustainable, green option to reduce this but its use may be restricted by flawed assumptions, argues Matthew Linegar of Stora Enso. …When it comes to decarbonisation, buildings and building materials are the elephant in the room, hitherto largely avoided in the UK environmental conversation. That needs to change urgently if we are serious about decarbonising society and achieving the UK’s target of net zero by 2050. …Engineered timber is a genuine alternative. This is not standard timber frame construction, but rather advanced materials made from wood that boast comparable structural properties to traditional building materials, with other supplementary benefits too. …The UK is waking up to the potential of engineered timber – albeit later and more slowly than in some other places in the world, such as Scandinavia, Central Europe and America. 

North Africa’s first continuous wood-based panel plant is nearing completion at El Tarf, in the far northeast side of Algeria. The complete plant project includes all subsections, ranging from the wood yard through the CPS+ continuous press to the short-cycle laminating line for coating finished boards. Demonstrating the versatile applications of the CPS+, the plant concept is designed especially for smaller capacities and can be an ideal entry-level system for the wood-based panel market. The materials for the project which include The 6 ft wide, 14.5m long CPS+ are being sourced from Eppingen in the administrative district of Heilbronn in Baden-Württemberg, German. With an expected production capacity of 250 cubic meters per day, North Africa’s first continuous wood-based panel plant will produce its very first board in August 2020.

Researchers at Yokohama National University (YNU) meticulously examined cellulose nanofibers extracted from spent coffee grounds, identifying them as a viable new raw source. The world generates over six million tons of coffee grounds, according to the International Coffee Organization. The journal Agriculture and Food Chemistry reported in 2012 that over half of spent coffee grounds end up in landfills. Cellulose nanofibers are the building blocks for plastic resins that can be made into biodegradable plastic products. The YNU team, led by Izuru Kawamura, an associate professor at the Graduate School of Engineering Science, set out to build upon previous research into extracting cellulose nanofibers from coffee grounds. …Demand for cellulose nanofibers is increasing worldwide, as industries realize their potential as a more environmentally sound and sustainable way to produce plastics. …This new process may be a boon for the coffee industry, which has limited options for monetizing spent coffee grounds.

Researchers from Osaka University have developed a new kind of plastic that can be used to make watertight containers that are also biodegradable in certain kinds of ocean water. The project was a joint effort from Osaka University and Nippon Shokuhin Kako Company, a Japanese agricultural giant that produces starch-based food products. The team extracted starch from cassava provided by Nippon Shokuhin Kako and combined it with cellulose taken from wood pulp. The mixture was dissolved in a water solution and spread into a transparent sheet that’s just 100 micrometers thick. The sheet was then heated to turn it into a solid plastic, according to a report in the Asahi Shimbun. …The sheet was then heated to turn it into a solid plastic, according to a report in the Asahi Shimbun.

The Urban Projects Bureau (UPB) has recently completed its second building at Graveney School in Tooting, London. The Observatory Block came from a long-term collaboration between the school and UPB. The UPB team recieved funding for a new 8-classroom teaching block in 2017, which after additional crowd-funding, later became the 10-classroom Observatory Block enjoyed by the school today. …”We determined that Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) would enable greatest control over the design and production of the building, while enabling affordability and rapid site construction,” said Matthew Jeniec, a Project Architect at UPB. The renewable material is exposed internally throughout the building, which allowed the team to save on internal linings.

Cross-laminated timber, black corrugated steel, and polished concrete merge in these handsome spaces. London-based Fentiman Design and Orsinibrewin Architects recently partnered up to revitalize a run-down button factory into a new industrial workspace topped with timber-clad lofts. The Victorian structure, located in the Borough of Hackney, now features a series of artist studios within the original factory space and a top-level addition with three brand-new lofts. Newly unveiled, each of the three timber-clad lofts are now for sale. …The trio includes a set of two-bedroom apartments and a single one-bedroom apartment, each complete with a private roof terrace overlooking the city. 

UK firm, Zaha Hadid Architects has won planning permission for the world’s first wooden football stadium. It will be the home of Forest Green Rovers Football Club in Gloucestershire.  Upon completion, the ambition is to be the world’s greenest football stadium, constructed entirely from timber and powered by sustainable energy sources. The first application for the 5,000-seater timber stadium was blocked in 2019. However, this second attempt was successful and approved by Stroud’s local council. …Zaha Hadid Architects originally won the competition to design the stadium back in 2016. The whole structure will be built entirely from resourced wood, including the louvred cladding and cantilever roof. A specialist membrane will cover the stadium. This will allow the grass to grow naturally under the sunlight whilst reducing shadows that could distract players and the crowd during the action. 

Developers are being asked to resolve a UK housing policy contradiction. On one hand, the UK desperately needs more new homes… On the other, the environmental impact of buildings is under the spotlight like never before and green standards are likely to get stricter. The problem is that standard building design practices are not aligned with environmental requirements.  So, we can either build our way out of the housing crisis while deepening the environmental one, or address climate change while hampering efforts to build new homes. Then …there is the fact that the upcoming tightening of the combustible cladding ban introduced in December 2018 will likely to remove one of the most promising tools available to resolve this contradiction – engineered timber. …The UK is an anomaly as countries around the world scale-up their use of engineered timber, recognising its benefits and advancing best practice.