Spotted: Carbon fibre composites are widely used substances, appearing in aircraft and spacecraft parts, wind turbine blades, bicycle frames, and many other components that need to be strong but light. However, most carbon fibres are difficult to recycle and repurpose. This is particularly problematic in the wind turbine industry. Given that, from 2030 onwards, around 5,700 wind turbines will be dismantled each year in Europe alone, a recycling solution needs to be found.
Fairmat has devised a way to recycle all types of carbon fibre composites. Its process is largely automated and uses robotics and machine learning to deliver precision and efficiency. The proprietary process breaks waste up into small pieces that keep the original resin and carbon fibre together. Fairmat then creates compounds from the waste and coats them with a small amount of additional resin to form a new matrix. The resulting compound is then moulded according to customer needs and hardened.
Ben Saada, Fairmat CEO, explains: “Recycling advanced materials like carbon fibre composites is one of the strongest actions we can take to accelerate the decarbonisation of the manufacturing sector.”
Although the process is still under development, Fairmat has already secured more than 35 per cent of European carbon fibre scrap supply and opened its first factory. The company has also secured €34 million in a series A funding round and hopes to eventually expand into the US, Spain, and Germany.
The growing mountain of used wind turbine blades sitting in landfills is encouraging a number of innovations targeting this waste. Some of those recently spotted by Springwise include blades made from a composite material that can be more easily recycled and reused, a bladeless turbine, and a bioplastic blade material that can be turned into gummy bears.
As part of our Timber Revolution series, we have rounded up the world’s 10 tallest buildings with mass-timber structures, including an engineered-wood shopping-centre extension and a carbon-negative cultural centre.
Compiled using data from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the roundup also features apartment towers, hotels and a school, demonstrating the potential of mass timber in building tall structures.
While some of the projects have structures made entirely from mass-timber components, such as cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glued laminated timber (glulam), others introduce concrete and steel elements to build taller.
Here are the world’s 10 tallest buildings with mass-timber structures:
Photo courtesy of Korb + Associates Architects
Ascent, USA, by Korb + Associates Architects (2022)
Designed by American studio Korb + Associates Architects, this 86.6-metre-tall luxury apartment and retail tower in Wisconsin was certified last year as the world’s tallest timber building.
Named Ascent, the 25-storey building has a concrete base, elevator and stair shafts, with the rest of its structure made from CLT and glulam.
Photo courtesy of Moelven
Mjøstårnet, Norway, by Voll Arkitekter (2019)
Certified as the world’s tallest timber building at the time of its completion in 2019, the 85.4-metre-tall Mjøstårnet tower by Norwegian architecture studio Voll Arkitekter has glulam columns and elevator shafts made entirely from CLT.
Located in Brumunddal – an area in Norway with an established wood-processing industry – the timber used to build Mjøstårnet was locally sourced.
Photo by Baudevelopment
HoHo Wien, Austria, by RLP Rüdiger Lainer + Partner (2020)
Austrian architecture studio RLP Rüdiger Lainer + Partner designed the mixed-use HoHo Wien building with three connected tower blocks arranged in an L-shape, each with a concrete core supporting the timber structure.
According to the studio, 75 per cent of the 84-metre-tall building above the ground-floor level is made from wood, including walls, ceilings, floors and columns.
Photo by Jannes Linders for Team V Architecture
Haut, the Netherlands, Team V Architecture (2022)
Dutch architecture studio Team V Architecture designed the 21-storey Haut residential building with floors and load-bearing inner walls made from CLT, along with a predominantly glazed facade and a core, basement and foundations made of concrete.
The 73-metre-tall structure features a rooftop garden with rainwater storage and 1,500 square metres of solar panels on its roof and facade, helping it achieve a BREEAM Outstanding sustainability rating.
Photo by Patrick Degerman
Sara Kulturhus Centre, Sweden, by White Arkitekter (2021)
The Sara Kulturhus Centre in Skellefteå, Sweden, is a 72.8-metre-tall structure made from CLT and glulam that architecture studio White Arkitekter designed to be carbon negative over its lifetime.
It was completed in 2021 and contains a theatre, gallery, library, museum and hotel.
“Embodied carbon emissions from materials, transport and construction as well as carbon emissions from operational energy during 50 years are less than the carbon sequestration in wood within the building,” said White Arkitekter partner Robert Schmitz.
Photo by Ossip van Duivenbode
De Karel Doorman, the Netherlands, by Ibelings van Tilburg Architecten (2012)
Dutch architecture studio Ibelings van Tilburg Architecten restored a 1940s shopping centre in Rotterdam and topped it with a hybrid structure of wood and steel containing 114 apartments.
The original shopping centre was ready for demolition before the studio’s intervention, which rests on existing concrete pillars and foundations and extends the building to a height of 70 metres.
“By choosing to ‘top up’ the building we have prevented demolition and the need to remove 15,000 tonnes of concrete,” said the studio.
Photo by Peter Clarke
55 Southbank Boulevard, Australia, by Bates Smart (2020)
Australian architecture studio Bates Smart transformed a concrete building in Melbourne into a 69.7-metre-tall hotel by adding a 10-storey CLT structure on top of it.
Completed in 2020, the studio claims that the project is Australia’s first CLT extension.
“The existing concrete building was designed to support an additional five floors of concrete structure, however by utilising timber, which is 20 per cent the weight of concrete, an additional 10 levels were able to be built providing 15,000 square metres of new floor space and 220 new hotel rooms,” Bates Smart told Dezeen.
Photo courtesy of Zug Estates Holding AG
Arbo, Switzerland, by Manetsch Meyer Architects (2019)
Swiss architecture studio Manetsch Meyer Architects designed three buildings for the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts campus in the Swiss municipality of Risch-Rotkreuz.
Two of the three buildings were constructed with composite structures of wood and concrete, including the tallest building named Arbo, which is 60 metres tall and currently the world’s eighth-tallest mass-timber building.
According to the project developer Zug Estates, Arbo was the tallest wooden building in Switzerland when it was completed in 2019.
Photo courtesy of CPG Consultants
Eunoia Junior College, Singapore, by CPG Consultants (2019)
Completed in 2019 by building management firm CPG Consultants, the Eunoia Junior College comprises both a 10-storey and 12-storey tower, alongside a five-storey structure topped with a sports field. At its tallest point, it reaches 56 metres.
Described by the firm as Singapore’s first high-rise junior college, the school is constructed with CLT exterior walls clad with aluminium, teamed with floors made up of concrete slabs and glulam beams.
Photo by Michael Elken
Brock Commons Tallwood House, Canada, by Acton Ostry Architects (2017)
This student residence in Vancouver was formerly the tallest contemporary mass-timber building in the world at the time of its completion in 2017.
Although its height of 53 metres has now been well surpassed, Canadian studio Acton Ostry Architects designed the student housing to demonstrate that engineered wood was a viable option for building high-rise structures.
It is constructed from two concrete cores, along with CLT floor panels that are supported by glulam columns.
Timber Revolution This article is part of Dezeen’s Timber Revolution series, which explores the potential of mass timber and asks whether going back to wood as our primary construction material can lead the world to a more sustainable future.
All electric vehicles, except Teslas, use public and private L-2 chargers via a J1772 connector, also known as the J-plug. (Tesla vehicles come with the adapter that lets you use the J-plug.) An L-2 charger will typically take about 4-10 hours to fully charge an EV. For home EV charging, that usually works.
“Eighty percent of EV charging is done at home anyway, and they charge overnight,” Myers added. “The average mileage that an EV driver drives is around 30 miles a day. People really don’t need to go in and do a super-quick fill up at home.… You don’t run your cell phone until it’s completely empty and then run to go charge again. You use it during the day, and at night you plug it in and then it charges. That’s really how EVs are run. So we kind of have to get into that mentality [with our cars].”
Public DC fast chargers
Even so, sometimes we need a quick charge to get us home. “Where these [DC] fast chargers come in is along major highways, because that’s where you do need it if you’re traveling from here to here: to provide that 15-minute, half-hour stop,” Myers said. “You get some coffee or whatever, fill up and then be on your way.”
FYI: there are three types of DC fast chargers: CHAdeMO, CCS, and Tesla. Again, you’ll find these DCFC stations in public, but not for home EV charging.
CHAdeMO (the initialism for charge de move is pronounced CHAD-em-oh) has become the standard for manufacturers like Nissan and Mitsubishi.
The more common CCS, or combined charging system, is an open-source standard. In the US, all newly manufactured passenger EVs (except Tesla) will use the CCS connector.
Tesla vehicles utilize their own DC fast chargers, but vehicles come with adaptors for CCS.
Spotted: Agriculture is highly vulnerable to climate changes and extreme weather events, and as global warming heats the planet, this vulnerability will get worse. Seasonal climate variability already frequently undermines farm yields, reduces food availability, and lowers income. Small-scale agricultural producers, who often feed themselves from their farms as well as others, are especially affected by unpredictable rainfall. Oko was created to help farmers deal with this uncertainty.
The startup provides low-cost crop insurance for small farmers. Oko (which is the name of an African deity who protects harvests), uses the concept of index insurance. This uses data analysis and risk calculation, rather than onsite inspections, to create cheaper and more accessible insurance.
Farmers sign up and manage their insurance using their mobile phones. They pay around $20 (around €18.60) for one season’s coverage of approximately 1.7 hectares. Oko analyses the risk to each plot and the cost of insurance using historical and weather data.
The company uses real-time satellite data and rainfall monitoring to monitor for floods and check the amount of rainfall needed for a good harvest. If there is a flood or if rainfall drops below a certain amount, a payment to the farmers is triggered automatically. Because farmers only need to sign up once to receive future payouts automatically, it reduces the chances that these smallholder farmers will fall victim to fraud and fake insurance scams every time a drought hits.
Tackling climate change is partly about building resiliency, and insurance that is affordable and easy to use is one way to do this. Springwise has also spotted other innovations aimed at building climate resilience. These include improving the biodiversity of forests with fungus, and using modular greenhouses to protect farmers from the effects of extreme weather.
Next in our Timber Revolution series is a profile of Mjøstårnet, an 85.4-metre-high tower in Brumunddal, Norway, that was one of the world’s first true timber skyscrapers.
The 18-storey mixed-use building was named world’s tallest timber building by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) when it was completed in March 2019, comfortably surpassing the 53-metre Brock Commons Tallwood House in Vancouver.
Architecture studio Voll Arkitekter believes that the milestone demonstrated what the future of sustainable architecture could look like.
Mjøstårnet is located along Norway’s lake Mjøsa
“Wood construction has gained a new renaissance and we are proud to be able to help wooden architecture reach new heights,” Voll Arkitekter partner Øystein Elgsaas told Dezeen.
“Mjøstårnet is not the blueprint of a tall timber building but a contributor to further sustainable development,” Elgsaas added.
“Sustainable-wise, the most important aspect of our building was to show that it is possible to build large, complex timber buildings, and in that fashion, inspire others to do the same.”
The building is surrounded by abundant forestry
Located on the shore of Norway’s biggest lake, Mjøsa, which lends its name to the building, the 18-storey tower contains apartments, a hotel, office space and a restaurant.
It was built using two types of engineered wood: cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glue-laminated timber – also known as glulam. Because both kinds of wood are formed of layers of lamellas glued together crosswise, they are significantly stronger than standard wood.
It was constructed with CLT and glulam. Photo by Øystein Elgsaas
Large glulam trusses made from light-coloured spruce wood support the structure along its facades as well as forming its internal columns and beams. Meanwhile, CLT was used to support the building’s three elevators and two staircases.
The structural mass timber was left exposed inside, making the tower quick to build. The groundwork for the project began in April 2017 and the first timber construction took place just six months later.
The building is 85.4 metres tall. Photo by Øystein Elgsaas
The studio was particularly keen to use timber because of its sustainability credentials. Trees act as carbon sponges, absorbing atmospheric carbon which is then locked up in the wood and stored in the building.
“Wood is a better option than concrete when it comes to the carbon storage in the material itself,” said Elgsaas.
“Where you traditionally need a large quarry to source the material for the concrete production, it leaves large scars in the environment that don’t ‘heal’ in the same way as a large area used for harvesting trees does,” he continued.
“A sustainably managed forest and harvesting of the trees would actually benefit the area’s biological diversity.”
The timber was sourced from spruce and pine trees nearby. Photo by Øystein Elgsaas
Brumunddal’s proximity to a major forestry and wood processing hub meant that the materials for Mjøstårnet were sourced from nearby spruce and pine forests.
“The spruce used in the construction of the glulam elements, such as trusses, columns and beams, were sourced locally in the area of Ringsaker,” Elgsaas recalled.
“The timber is cut to standard board size planks at the local sawmill and then processed at Moelven, where they make the final glulam products used in the construction,” he added. “Moelven is just a fifteen minutes drive from Brumunddal.”
Mjøstårnet houses an office, hotel and restaurant. Photo by Øystein Elgsaas
Scandinavia’s access to large woodlands gives it an abundance of local wood resources, fuelling a surge in architects turning to wood for projects in the region.
Among the notable tall timber projects in Nordic countries is Sweden’s Kajstaden Tall Timber Building by CF Møller Architects and Finland’s tallest wooden apartment block, Puukuokka, by OOPEAA.
According to Elgsaas, the timber industry has changed since Mjøstårnet was built and public scepticism over the potential of timber for tall buildings has subsided.
“The focus on the environment and the benefits of using wood has changed dramatically since we began our project back in 2015,” he said.
“People have discovered the possibility and benefits of using different building materials and that there is no longer a predetermined solution to what a larger and more complex building could be made from.”
All of the timber was processed in nearby Moelven
Although the studio was committed to using timber, the material did not come without its issues. The inherent lightness of timber proved tricky for the architects because the top of the building was prone to shifting in the wind.
“Peak accelerations due to wind on the top floor of Mjøstårnet is on the limit of what is acceptable for residential buildings,” said Elgsaas.
“The acceleration in the movement is quicker than in a heavier building of steel and concrete and if not kept within the required levels, it could lead to nausea.”
Voll Arkitekter believes the building pushed the limits of timber construction
Architects create composite buildings – wood-concrete-hybrid structures or timber frames with concrete cores to avoid this problem. However, Voll Arkitekter decided to incorporate concrete within Mjøstårnet’s floors to give it the necessary sturdiness and weight.
“We increased the weight on the upper floors: floors 12 to 18 are 300 millimetre-thick concrete made of a precast element at the bottom and an in-situ layer of topping concrete,” Elgsaas explained.
“Replacing wood flooring with concrete flooring on the upper floors meant that the building would be heavier towards the top and that would slow down the acceleration in the movement of the building when affected by wind forces.”
The studio hopes it encourages more sustainable building creation
In 2022, Mjøstårnet was overtaken as the world’s tallest timber building by Ascent, an 86.6-metre-tall tower in Wisconsin, which was designed by Korb + Associates Architects.
Ascent is unlikely to hold the top spot for long, as a 100-metre-tall housing block in Switzerland timber building by Danish studio Schmidt Hammer Lassen is set to become the world’s tallest when it completes in 2026.
The photography is by Ricardo Foto unless stated otherwise.
This article is part of Dezeen’s Timber Revolution series, which explores the potential of mass timber and asks whether going back to wood as our primary construction material can lead the world to a more sustainable future.
Spotted: With food price inflation remaining at historically high levels, many consumers are seeking savings wherever they can find them. While the isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic has largely eased, some of the habits acquired during that time, such as grow-your-own herbs and veg, remain strong. To help new growers access the advantages of home-grown, organic produce, French company Urban Cuisine designed a stylish indoor hydroponic garden container that makes it fun and easy to cultivate fruits, vegetables, and herbs.
Named Liv, the connected garden comes with an app and the choice of over 17 different plants. The app guides growers through the set-up and planting process, provides regular advice on the growth of each variety, and includes an FAQ section and connections to Urban Cuisine’s horticulturalists for urgent queries. The garden’s sleek design fits a self-contained water tank, a micro-climate, ventilation controlled by integrated sensors, and a low-power LED light panel.
When setting up a garden, growers choose Grow Pods based on how long they want to wait for a harvest and what they want to use the produce for. Each organic Grow Pod contains the essential substrate and nutrients for the seeds to grow. Liv is available as the garden alone, as a subscription of monthly deliveries of Grow Pods, or as a garden and subscription together.
Other ways that Springwise has spotted innovators improving local food systems include an automated indoor herb garden and a no-smell countertop compost system.
Mass timber could become a key tool in reducing waste from the construction industry, GXN partner Lasse Lind tells Dezeen in this interview for our Timber Revolution series.
GXN was founded in 2007 as the research arm of Copenhagen-based architecture studio 3XN.
GXN looks at circular and low-carbon design, behavioural design – including the social aspect of buildings – and technologies that can help the industry transition to a more sustainable future.
Use of timber “exploded”
Its use of timber has “exploded” recently, with around half of its buildings now having a significant element of wood in their structure, up from almost none five years ago, Lind said.
“We’ve always been very interested in materials and material technology,” Lind told Dezeen.
“Our material focus has evolved to change over the years and now we’re extremely focused on recyclability, recycled content, low-carbon, natural biogenic materials – that is our absolute focus.”
Above: Lasse Lind is a partner at GXN. Top: A CLT-framed hotel on Bornholm is among the studio’s projects. Photo by Adam Mørk
The majority of the studio’s work at the moment is in mass timber, which Lind says has many advantages over other building materials.
“The first one is obviously lower carbon, which is a big advantage, and the fact that it’s kind of regenerative as a material,” he said.
“There are other aspects as well, which are related to build-ability,” he added. “Timber tends to be lighter than, for example, concrete construction. So you need less transport and, in principle, fewer crane lifts.”
Timber helps you “close the loop on waste”
The fact that everything is prefabricated when it comes to mass-timber construction also means it is possible to work with more precise tolerances and cut down on waste, according to Lind.
In a recent project, a full-timber hotel extension on the island of Bornholm, Denmark, the studio even used offcuts from the cross-laminated timber (CLT) used for the building to create furniture and furnishings.
“You don’t have a lot of waste, potentially, in the production,” he said. “Especially if you think about it like we did in the prototype on Bornholm, where we used all the offcuts for furniture – you can actually close the loop on waste in the production chain a bit.”
The studio’s use of timber has “exploded”. Photo by Paul Casselman
As part of its research in this area, GXN is also experimenting with using offcuts from CLT boards as slabs in its buildings.
“You would have to live with the fact that it’s different thicknesses and you would have to look at the grid because if it’s offcut materials, you cannot get everything in eight metres,” he said.
“You have to have some substructure to accommodate a variety of sizes, so you need to spend a little bit more energy on the substructure but then you can actually use these offcuts as actual slabs.”
At the moment, the addition of concrete to the slabs is one of the things that makes it hard to design fully reversible timber buildings.
“In larger timber structures, where you have slabs, the standard practice is to cast everything out due to sound and vibration,” Lind explained.
“So essentially, if you have a timber slab, you cast a screed of concrete on top, and that actually messes up the reversibility of a lot of the structure,” he added.
GXN has attempted to create buildings that use alternatives to concrete slabs, including a version that saw the studio use egg crates filled with sand instead of the slabs.
“What we tried to do on the project on Bornholm is to have these crates and fill them with granite dust, waste production from granite, but the engineers wouldn’t sign off on it, unfortunately, so we weren’t able to do that for that project,” Lind said.
“But we are doing a building right now where we are getting rid of that concrete screed,” he continued.
“It’s something we’re always aware of when we’re building with timber – if we can get away from that detail, we’d like to, because it’s a small detail but it messes up the reversibility of the whole structure.”
Carbon budget “structures the discussion”
Lind believes that in the future, we will see a lot of hybrid timber systems as the industry figures out when wood is best to use.
“We [need to] figure out what timber is really good for, what concrete is really good for and what steel is really good for,” he said.
“The approach should be to minimise the use of concrete and steel, but there are just parts of a building where [those materials] makes more sense,” he added.
“I’m very interested that we use materials where they are best, and I think there are a lot of places where we could easily replace concrete or steel with timber.”
The Lemvig climate centre features a wavy wooden facade. Photo by Adam Mørk
To help minimise carbon emissions, GXN sets carbon budgets for each of its projects that vary depending on the type of project and country it’s built in.
“The one thing we always try to do is bring a carbon budget, because it puts carbon up for discussion with every material choice and in that sense, it structures the discussion, like a financial budget does,” Lind said.
As timber buildings become more popular, Lind believes that as well as having an impact on carbon emissions, the material will also impact the way that buildings look, behave and feel.
“I think we will begin to explore, as designers, the vocabulary of what we can do, which I think will be very interesting,” he said.
“I don’t think it will be the same as architecture was 50 years ago when we kind of discovered the computer, but if you think about it, there are a lot of really creative half-timber buildings in Europe that have all kinds of weird ornaments and shapes and forms,” he added.
But though the use of timber and mass-timber is becoming more popular, there are still challenges facing architects when designing timber buildings. One of these is conveying the safety of the buildings to insurance companies.
“What we’re seeing as a challenge for timber buildings right now is generally insurance, because it’s a different material from what people usually use,” Lind said.
“We often find that insurers need to get on board and understand that it’s different. Because you can secure timber buildings, you can build them in a way where they are safe to operate and they’re safe as an asset, but there is a degree of scepticism from insurers.”
Designers should love timber’s “natural patina”
There are also sometimes regulatory difficulties as fire safety rules are often based on buildings made from steel or concrete.
“Inherently timber structures burn in a different way than steel or concrete does,” Lind said.
“And you can build safely with timber, but the way that you measure and regulate it needs to be different because it’s not steel,” he continued.
“Steel gets extremely hot and then it snaps, timber burns very slowly. It’s just a different strategy, fire-wise, that you need to apply.”
GXN uses a carbon budget for its projects. Photo by Rasmus Hjorthøj
Architects and clients also need to get used to the fact that timber is a living material, which means it will change in ways that concrete and steel buildings might not, he argued.
“There’s a certain degree of natural patina that you should love as a designer,” Lind said.
“You should love the fact that it’s a material that changes over time – it’ll change colour, maybe have some cracks, it’s not going to look the same forever,” he added.
“So there’s some aesthetical considerations that you should be able to take your client through and understand that this is a living material and performs in a different way than an inorganic material.”
The architect believes that we’re only at the beginning of seeing the possibilities of timber and mass timber.
“There are loads of things that you could do even with fairly simple timber construction; there’s a whole field of investigation that we’re getting into which will be very interesting,” Lind concluded.
This article is part of Dezeen’s Timber Revolution series, which explores the potential of mass timber and asks whether going back to wood as our primary construction material can lead the world to a more sustainable future.
Spotted: Fluorinated gases (F-gas) are so harmful to the environment that the EU is phasing out their use, aiming to get down to 20 per cent of the 2014 amount by 2030, and banning their use in new devices where “less harmful alternatives are widely available.” German company Magnotherm is one of the companies creating alternatives that provide refrigeration without the environmental toxins.
Taking advantage of the magnetocaloric effect (MCE) – a process in which some materials heat up when magnetised – the Magnotherm team uses surges in magnetic fields to heat and cool products. The process uses no F-gases and produces zero direct carbon dioxide emissions. When materials are placed in thermally insulated chambers and a magnetic force is applied, the materials heat up. Extracting the heat then allows for products to be heated or cooled, as needed.
The company recently introduced its first product available for commercial sale. The Polaris refrigerator is a fully magnetic beverage cooler that holds up to 150 drinks and cools them down to five degrees Celsius. Importantly, the system requires little power for its low-pressure processes, making it almost noise-free. Magnotherm builds bespoke cooling systems that can be set to specific temperatures, making the technology usable in many industries. Efficiency remains steady regardless of the size of the system.
Cooling is so important to the modern food industry that innovators are improving almost every aspect of the cold chain. Springwise has spotted a supercooling system that prevents ice formation as well as solar-powered refrigerated trucks.
Spotted: As climate change makes weather and water supplies more unpredictable, it is vital that farming develops ways to use resources more efficiently. Data is playing an increasing role in this, by giving farmers better information on which to base decisions. One startup taking the lead on this is AguroTech. Founded in 2020, the company focuses on providing data and insights to farmers to help them use resources – such as water – more efficiently.
AguroTech has developed a platform that uses sensors, satellite and drone imagery, weather stations, crop and soil models, and more to provide unique and actionable recommendations to help farmers enhance their farm’s performance. The hardware and software provide farmers with real-time, artificial-intelligence-powered (AI) insights that can help them to better manage water, fertiliser, and pesticide use. The company will also soon be able to help farmers earn credits based on the amount of carbon stored in the soil.
The company is taking part in “LIFE – The Future of Farming”, an EU-sponsored initiative promoting collaboration between agricultural groups, farms, colleges, scientists, and municipal governments across Europe on mitigating damages caused by climate change.
AguroTech recently raised €1.5 million in a series A funding round led by VC Navus Ventures and ROM InWest. With this extra funding, AguroTech plans to scale further and expand internationally.
Improving farming yields while using fewer resources is the goal of a number of innovations Springwise has recently spotted. And it is a vital part of the response to global warming. These innovations include everything from a unique approach to regenerating desert lands to spreading rocks on farmland to capture carbon.
Up next in our Timber Revolution series is a look at the Dalston Works apartment complex in London by Waugh Thistleton Architects, which is the world’s largest cross-laminated timber building.
Completed in 2017, Dalston Works is a 10-storey residential development in east London that contains 121 apartments with balconies as well as two ground-level courtyards, retail and restaurant space and an integrated flexible workspace.
Upon its completion, the project became the world’s largest cross-laminated timber (CLT) building, was its uses more of the material by volume – 3,852 cubic metres – than any other building. Dezeen is not aware of any larger CLT buildings constructed since.
Dalston Works is a mixed-use development in east London
It was designed by local architecture studio Waugh Thistleton Architects – a Shoreditch-based timber specialist that has been predominantly working with engineered wood since 2003.
Waugh Thistleton Architects also designed Murray Grove, which was previously profiled as part of Dezeen’s Timber Revolution series.
CLT is a panel material made by gluing at least three layers of wood at right angles to each other, which is significantly less carbon-intensive than other structural materials such as concrete or steel.
The panels are characterised by structural rigidity in two directions thanks to the arrangement of the layers and are cut to size before being assembled on-site.
Dalston Works has external, party and core walls as well as flooring and stairs made entirely from pieces of CLT that were delivered to the formerly neglected brownfield site over 374 days.
It is the world’s largest CLT building
“[CLT] is replenishable, beautiful, healthy, fast and economic,” Andrew Waugh told Dezeen, who co-founded the architecture studio with Anthony Thistleton in 1997.
“Timber is easy to cut and to build with, so the buildings are easy to adapt – so they last longer,” he added.
“This also makes the material easier to use as part of a prefabricated system so that we can make higher quality buildings faster and with better working conditions for those involved.”
Two ground-floor courtyards feature in the design
The development is separated into several boxy volumes, while the CLT frame was clad in traditional bricks chosen to reference the Edwardian and Victorian architecture of nearby warehouses and terraced properties.
“[The brickwork] was important to the client and to the planners,” reflected Waugh. “I am happy with the way it looks but would have preferred a lightweight cladding material.”
“We needed to greatly increase the amount of timber in the structure just to hold the bricks up in the air,” Waugh explained.
The CLT structure is clad in traditional bricks
Despite this, Dalston Works weighs a fifth of a concrete building of its size, according to the studio, which reduced the number of deliveries required during construction by 80 per cent.
Creating a lighter core meant that the project could reach much higher than if it had been constructed in concrete, since the development sits above the underground Elizabeth Line railway.
The project’s CLT frame also has 50 per cent less embodied carbon than a traditional concrete one. This refers to the amount of energy required to produce and form a material or object.
A timber core means that the building weighs less than a similarly sized concrete structure
“There wasn’t a great deal of client motivation or legislative demand for any measures beyond meeting BREEAM and building regulations,” Waugh recalled, referring to standards that limit operational emissions as opposed to embodied emissions.
“My own view is that building regulations are pretty effective – and if you have an efficient, airtight building which is passively designed to suit its location then the operational carbon demand will be pretty low, and you have to assume that we will generate it from renewable energy in the near future.”
“Lots of stuff and complex gear designed to very slightly reduce the energy demand is a bit of a waste of resources. The real issue here is reducing the use of concrete and steel – the carbon savings from doing that are immense.”
According to project engineer Ramboll, more than 2,600 tonnes of carbon dioxide is stored within Dalston Works’ CLT frame.
Nearly six years on from Dalston Works’ completion, Waugh reflected on the significance of the world’s largest CLT building.
“At the time it was an important milestone – to demonstrate that timber is a viable alternative to concrete and steel – and at scale,” reflected the architect. “But I think it’s dangerous to measure a building’s success by its size,” he warned.
Andrew Waugh has called for action from the UK government to encourage more mass timber architecture
Known as a long-time campaigner for the use of mass timber in architecture, Waugh said that he recently wrote a “big piece” to the UK government calling for it to invest more in sustainable architecture practices, explaining that the UK has been “left way behind” compared with various mass-timber projects being created in other parts of the world.
“The UK is behind in terms of timber because we have a government that does not prioritise carbon reduction – and is heavily influenced by lobbying from both construction companies and the manufacturing industry,” said the architect.
“Architects need to start driving demand – seeking out opportunities to design in timber and build a market. Designers need to prioritise carbon reduction in their work and start reconsidering how they think about success in the buildings they design.”
The photography is courtesy of Waugh Thistleton Architects.
This article is part of Dezeen’s Timber Revolution series, which explores the potential of mass timber and asks whether going back to wood as our primary construction material can lead the world to a more sustainable future.
