Category Archives: Wood, Paper & Green Building

Described as a “modern ship on land,” the Freebooter apartment building in Amsterdam aims to evoke the form and feel of a maritime vessel. Giacomo Garziano, founder of Dutch architecture firm GG-loop, stacked two 1,290-square-foot duplexes on top of each other and wrapped them in striking timber louvers. … The architects spent a year studying how light would hit the building so they could created a skin made from cross laminated timber louvers. The result is a pattern of wood slats that provides privacy while playing a gorgeous game of light and shadows.

University of Liverpool engineers have built an eco-friendly timber building that does not use any adhesives in the construction process.  …Engineers designed and constructed a large section of the office space using adhesive-free laminated timber beams and adhesive-free cross laminated timber panels. They used densified wooden dowels and plates to connect the beams with columns rather than metallic fasteners. The dowels and plates are made using softwood from sustainable harvested timber and compressed using a heated hydraulic press to reduce thickness whilst making it denser and stronger than common hardwood. …Liverpool engineer and project lead, Dr Zhongwei Guan said: ‘…The structure we have designed and built is arguably the first building in the world to be constructed using this compressed wood technology! It showcases a …method of connecting wood and joining structures using compressed wood dowels and fasteners without the use of adhesives or metal products.

Janet Sycamore

One year after banning the use of combustible materials for high-rise buildings, the government reviewed the effectiveness of its decision. …A staggering proportion believed the wording of the ban and associated guidance need to be amended to improve clarity – it was felt that the legislation was confusing and causing technical specification problems. This has certainly been reflected in the nature of enquiries received by the Timber Decking and Cladding Association – with over the top decisions sometimes being taken to unnecessarily remove or omit wood from projects unaffected by the ban. …the legislation is not actually doing anything… because of its lack of clarity. …legislation is focused on two terms: ‘combustible’ and ‘non-combustible’ With timber being classed as combustible it falls into the same generic group as …non-timber cladding products. Yet, the ‘reaction to fire’ properties of timber can be significantly improved with flame retardant technologies… It’s a point not even considered by the original ban.

Design for deconstruction out of low-carbon materials is the way of the future. We love wood construction because it stores carbon for the life of the building. But people often ask, “What about when the life of the building is over?” The answer is what has been called design for deconstruction, and now Cepezed architects call circular design. …The Netherlands has set itself the goal of rendering all construction activities fully circular by 2050, while Cepezed has a long reputation for modular and demountable design and construction. Moreover, director Menno Rubbens of developer Cepezed projects is part of the national program committee to achieve the national circularity goals. …Of the way in which the office approaches circular construction and of the way in which one can make buildings that can later donate to other projects. Or even be reused elsewhere in their entirety.

Vincent Callebaut Architectures has imagined The Rainbow Tree, a modular mass timber condominium tower in Cebu City, Philippines. Revealing the cultural and natural Filipino heritage, the project, named after an iconic and colorful tree from the Philippines the Rainbow Eucalyptus, was entirely conceived in a way to reduce the carbon footprint of the building. Aiming to build a residential structure with the double environmental certification of LEED and BERDE, the project “offers the perfect balance between mixed cultural heritage and natural heritage of unparalleled splendor”. With notions of passive bioclimatism and advanced renewable energies, The Rainbow Tree opts for a structure made of wood, the only natural, abundant, and renewable material, overlayed with more than 30,000 greeneries from the neighboring tropical forests.

Shaun Bosson, Gavin Murphy & Richard Searle

New funding for wood processing facilities here is expected to create more work for Gisborne businesses outside the wood industry.  A regional support package for Tairawhiti was yesterday announced by the Government, along with a $12.1 million loan from the Provincial Growth Fund for WET Gisborne Ltd.  Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones said the loan would accelerate the development of WET Gisborne Ltd’s wood processing production line, which will produce a laminated structural wood product at the Wood Cluster Centre of Excellence at Matawhero.  In addition, a $2.98 million loan will go towards the Wood Cluster Centre of Excellence combined heat and power plant, which is integral to the overall success of the Wood Cluster.  …“This investment is another way the Government is supporting Gisborne and the wider region as the forestry industry experiences the effects of Covid-19.

HÀ NỘI — Việt Nam’s export value of wood and wood products reached US$1.53 billion in the first two months of this year, marking a year-on-year increase of 10.1 per cent, according to a report by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. The US, Japan, China, the Republic of Korea and the EU continued to be the five most important markets of Việt Nam, with total export turnover reaching over $9.3 billion, accounting for 90 per cent of the total export value of the whole industry. Of which, the US had become a huge market for the Vietnamese wood industry. Insiders said that forestry products were one of the few products seeing export growth in both volume and value as COVID-19 threatens economic development in countries around the world. However, in the long term, the impact of the epidemic would be unavoidable, so the timber industry would have to find a new direction.

British designer Paul Cocksedge has unveiled plans to build a cross-laminated timberbridge across the Liesbeek River in Cape Town. London-based Cocksedge plans to use eucalyptus, an invasive tree species in South Africa, to create the Exploded View bridge. By transforming this wood into cross-laminated timber, or CLT, the material becomes much stronger, making it a viable and more sustainable alternative to steel or concrete. Indigenous to Australia, eucalyptus trees such as forest red gum and karri were introduced to South Africa in the early 19th century, for plantation timber, but also for shade and shelter. They have become a problem as they require more water than other species, particularly as South Africa recently suffered a severe water shortage. “It is an invasive, alien species of tree in South Africa, which is causing a lot of environmental problems,” Cocksedge told Dezeen.

Eight restoration scientists put on hard hats and heavy-duty boots and stepped inside the blackened shell of Notre Dame de Paris, the world’s most famous cathedral. Ten days earlier, a fire had swept through its attic, melted its roof, and sent its spire plunging like an arrow into the heart of the sacred space. …The charred remnants of attic timbers have stories of their own to tell, says Alexa Dufraisse, a CNRS researcher heading the wood group. Variations in thickness, density, and chemical composition of growth rings reveal climatic conditions year by year. “Wood registers absolutely everything while it’s growing,” she says. Notre Dame’s oak beams grew in the 12th and 13th centuries, a warm period known as the Medieval Climate Optimum. By connecting the growth ring record with what’s known about economic conditions at the time, researchers hope to see how climate variations affected medieval society, she says.

Architect’s Newspaper surveyed some of the leading practices in timber structure and facade engineering about the most innovative projects they worked on over the past year. Their responses highlight advanced applications of timber, ranging from a hybrid tower underway in Canada to greenhouse domes popping up in China. Paul Fast, Founding Partner, Fast + Epp …Eric McDonnell, Principal, Holmes Structures …Chris Carbone, Company Steward and Engineer, Bensonwood …Andrew Lawrence, Associate Director and Global Timber Specialist, ARUP …Lucas Epp, Head of Engineering, Structurecraft …Anne Monnier, Principal, KPFF

The site of Graham’s Gramophone Works redevelopment, in Notting Hill, north-west London, has had a colourful history. Built in the 1930s it originally housed a paint plant before operating as a gramophone factory and, most recently, as the headquarters and recording studios of Saga Records. …Now, contractor Graham has been tasked with transforming the former basement and two upper-storey headquarters into 65,000 square feet of work space within a transformed six upper-storey structure. …Cross-laminated and glulam timber will feature prominently in the new building, the latter of which provides the structural integrity needed to increase the footprint of the former building in both width and length. …Harman explains the materials appealed because of their carbon-friendly properties. According to Graham, the wood used absorbed the equivalent of 1,066 tonnes of CO2 as it grew, yielding a negative carbon footprint. The material’s light weight and simple assembly features also made it an easy choice.

Amin Taha’s architecture studio Groupwork has collaborated with structural engineer Webb Yates to design a conceptual 30-storey stone office block that would be cheaper and more sustainable than concrete or steel equivalents. Groupwork and Webb Yates designed the skyscraper to investigate how the cost and sustainability impact of a tall building with a stone structure compared to one with a concrete or steel structure. The research found that large commercial buildings could be built more cheaply and with less of an environmental impact using stone rather than concrete or steel. …Combining a stone frame with cross-laminated timber (CLT) floors would further reduce levels of embodied carbon and could create carbon negative buildings. Timber can be a carbon-negative material, as trees capture CO2 and store it in wood. “A combination of stone exoskeleton with CLT floor slabs is cheaper than the equivalent building using steel or concrete frames and with a negative carbon footprint,” explained Taha.

Australia has enough wood fibre to keep up with the demand for toilet paper, according to WA Plantation Resources chief executive Ian Telfer. He said Australia had no chance of running out of raw materials for toilet paper, which is made from softwood plantations such as pine, using thinning and sawmill residues. Mr Telfer made the assurances amid the the panic buying which is stripping supermarket shelves of toilet paper, causing altercations among customers, and prompting retailers to place limits on purchases. Kleenex was manufacturing round-the-clock at its facility in South Australia, as was Sorbent in New South Wales and Victoria. ABC Tissue, the maker of Quilton, has tripled production in its factories in Queensland, New South Wales and Forrestfield. Typically, WA sawmill and pine residues are exported as woodchips to factories in south-east Asia, where they are pulped, Mr Telfer said.