mass timber Archives

Studio Bark designs water-powered Breach House in UK countryside

London-based practice Studio Bark has unveiled plans for Breach House, a water-powered family home located in Leicestershire, UK.

Designed to enable the owners to “live off the land”, the proposal by Studio Bark will be powered by photovoltaic (PV) panels and micro-hydro energy, creating a home capable of running off-grid.

Render of water-powered home by Studio Bark — Breach House will be powered by photovoltaic (PV) panels and micro-hydro energy

The 430-metre-square proposal will comprise the new home, along with the restoration of an existing agricultural barn and extensive landscaping.

Making use of the site’s location among a network of small brooks, streams and ponds, run-off water from the surrounding fields will be used to provide a portion of the home’s energy needs. It will also be harvested on-site and filtered for use within the house.

View of 'water tower' within Breach House by Studio Bark — The ‘water tower’ connects the home’s two wings

“The concept is a rural home which establishes a reciprocity between ecology and human needs through water,” studio director Tom Bennett told Dezeen.

“The massing echoes the typology of a traditional farmstead, blending contextual influences to create a contemporary building which resonates subtly with its setting.”

Interior render of Breach House in Leicestershire — The design references the typology of traditional farm buildings

Drawing on the local typologies, the home will be arranged in clusters complemented by courtyards and sheltered outdoor spaces formed by deep overhanging eaves.

A ‘water tower’, which will sit centrally on the site, will house ventilation and circulation functions as well as water filtration.

It will also hold a staircase and corridor to connect the home’s two wings and was designed to be a visual reference to the use of water throughout the scheme.

Low carbon and natural materials suggested for the proposal include reclaimed brick, UK-sourced timber and reclaimed tiles, which were chosen in response to the character and heritage of the surrounding landscape.

Renders of the proposal reveal a largely timber structure, with exposed beams interspersed with skylights featuring on the home’s interior.

On the exterior, trapezoidal-shaped roofs will be clad with decorative tiles and provide shelter for a balcony adjacent to the bedroom on the upper floor.

Render of living interior at water-powered home by Studio Bark — Exposed timber beams and skylights will feature on the home’s interior

According to the studio, the residual carbon impact of the building is expected to be countered by landscaping proposals – including the planting of around 200 trees – that will accelerate carbon drawdown on the site.

Calculations undertaken by the studio suggest that these landscaping proposals will sequester roughly three times the amount of carbon that will be released over the building’s lifetime.

Render of living space within Breach House in Leicestershire — Run-off water will be harvested and filtered for use within the home

“Proposed works include a new woodland area, wet meadow, enriched wildflower meadow, reinstated historical copse, successional tree planting, new ponds and reinstated field boundaries,” Bennett said.

“These measures will sequester carbon, greatly enhance the ecological value of the currently agricultural site, in addition to assisting with natural flood management in the locality.”

Proposed bedroom interior within Breach House by Studio Bark — Breach House is expected to result in a 65 per cent biodiversity net gain

The proposal is anticipated to result in a 65 per cent biodiversity net gain, with additional habitat measures incorporated into the home set to include a bat attic.

Other architectural projects with a heavy focus on sustainability include the UK’s “most sustainable” and largest neighbourhood made from timber and a neighbourhood in Paris made up of limestone buildings.

The renders are courtesy of Studio Bark.

Project credits:

Architect: Studio Bark
Planning consultant/agent: Studio Bark
Client: Private Domestic
Structural engineer: Structure Workshop
Landscape architect: Studio 31
Energy consultant: Max Fordham
Hydrologist: Amber Planning
Ecologist: Elton Ecology
Arboriculturalist: RJ Tree Services
Highways: Create Consulting Engineers

Reference

Sustainable News

UK’s “most sustainable” neighbourhood receives planning approval

By Zarkon Group,24/02/2024

Development company Human Nature has received planning approval to transform a former industrial site in Lewes into a sustainable 685-home neighbourhood that will be the UK’s largest made from timber.

The Phoenix, which was granted planning permission last week, will be built from engineered timber and be the most sustainable neighbourhood in the UK, according to Human Nature.

The Phoenix sustainable neighbourhood by Human Nature — The buildings in the Phoenix development will have engineered timber structures

“One year after proposals were announced for the transformation of a 7.9-hectare brownfield site into the UK’s most sustainable neighbourhood, the Phoenix development has today been granted planning permission, taking the visionary project a step closer to reality,” said Human Nature.

“When complete, it will be the UK’s largest timber-structure neighbourhood and a blueprint for sustainable placemaking and social impact that can be deployed at scale.”

Sustainable neighbourhood in Lewes by Human Nature — It will be located on a former industrial site

Located in the South Downs National Park, the Phoenix will contain energy-efficient homes, public space and healthcare, retail, hospitality and industrial space, all constructed from engineered timber including cross-laminated timber.

It will be the largest structural timber neighbourhood in the UK by number of units, Human Nature’s head of sustainable construction Andy Tugby told Dezeen.

The buildings will range from two to five storeys tall and be clad in prefabricated panels made from locally sourced timber and biomaterials such as hemp.

Sustainable development in Lewes by Human Nature — A riverside walk will feature in the neighbourhood. Image by Carlos Penálver

Industrial structures on the site will be repurposed to house most of the community spaces, including a canteen, event hall, taproom, fitness centre, workspace and studios.

The Phoenix’ homes will be designed to be energy efficient and powered by renewable energy sourced from on-site photovoltaic panels and an off-site renewable energy facility.

Aiming to create a place for all generations and for people with mixed incomes, 30 per cent of the 685 residences will be affordable homes – 154 of which will be built to the government’s Local Housing Allowance rates and the remainder built as part of the First Homes scheme.

The Phoenix will be designed as a walkable neighbourhood that prioritises people over cars, with a mobility hub providing electric car shares, car hire, electric bike services and shuttle buses to help encourage a shift away from private vehicle use.

Public squares, gardens, community buildings and a riverside pathway that stretches the length of the site will provide space designed for interaction between residents.

Timber structure neighbourhood by Human Nature — The development will contain energy-efficient homes

The Phoenix masterplan was designed by Human Nature’s in-house design team with UK architecture studio Periscope and Kathryn Firth, director of masterplanning and urban design at Arup.

Developed designs for the scheme will be made in collaboration with UK architecture studios Archio, Ash Sakula, Mae Architects, Mole Architects and Periscope and engineering firms Expedition Engineering and Whitby Wood.

Drawing of a park surrounded by buildings — The Phoenix aims to provide sustainable housing to people with a range of income brackets. Image by Carlos Penálver

Human Nature is a development company based in Lewes that was founded by former Greenpeace directors Michael Manolson and Jonathan Smales.

Other timber developments published on Dezeen include a zero-carbon housing scheme in Wales by Loyn & Co and Henning Larsen’s plans for Copenhagen’s first all-timber neighbourhood.

The images are by Ash Sakula, courtesy of Human Nature, unless stated.

Reference

Interior Design

Co-working members’ club The Malin opens wood-filled Nashville location

By Zarkon Group,18/02/2024

The Malin has designed its work-oriented member’s club in Nashville, its first outside of New York City, with an earthy colour palette and a mix of vintage and contemporary furniture to give it a hotel-like feel.

Located in the Wedgewood Houston neighbourhood, The Malin is one of a number of creative businesses within the Nashville Warehouse Co, which claims to be the city’s “first large-scale mass-timber building”.

Lounge-like space inside mass-timber building in Nashville — The mass-timber structure of the Nashville Warehouse Co building is visible throughout The Malin’s interiors

The building’s timber structure is highly visible throughout the interiors, and the pine ceilings and deep beams add to the warm, earthy palette of the various work areas.

Designed by The Malin‘s in-house team, the club encompasses 16,000 square feet of space that encompasses 48 dedicated desks, seven private offices, five meeting rooms and two libraries.

Oak banquettes with velvet upholstery within industrial-style space — Wood varieties including light oak and dark walnut are used throughout the member’s club

All of these rooms feature rich colours and an eclectic mix of vintage and contemporary furniture, intended to feel more like a hotel than a co-working space.

“We’re in the hospitality business, so we carefully tailor each location of The Malin to fit the needs of the neighbourhood and professional community,” said The Malin founder and CEO Ciaran McGuigan. “Not only are we providing the highest level of hospitality, but we’re doing it in a refined and beautiful space that contributes to a productive workflow.”

Rows of walnut worktables with red upholstered seating — The club offers both dedicated workspaces and casual areas for members to meet and relax

The design team decorated The Malin Wedgewood Houston with deep-toned Benjamin Moore paints, Schumacher wallpapers and glazed zellige tiles, while bespoke millwork is executed in dark walnut and white oak.

A variety of formal and casual seating areas are available for members to utilise as desired, either for individual or group work, or entertaining guests.

Open-plan space with sofas, armchairs and communal tables — Sofas, communal tables and banquettes are all available for use as desired

Large communal tables accompanied by cushioned tubular metal chairs, sofas and armchairs with brightly coloured velvet upholstery, and cafe tables beside leather banquettes are among the options available.

Surfaces of limestone, travertine and multiple varieties of marble – including Giallo Siena, Irish Green, Onice Brecia and Aresbecator Oribico – complement the wood tones and colourful furniture.

Meeting room with tan walls, large wooden table and tubular metal chairs — Private meeting rooms are similarly designed to look more like a hotel than an office

Members also have access to an acre of outdoor community park space for hosting events, and receive discounts and perks at several neighbourhood hotspots.

“The Malin is committed to providing an environment equipped with personalised services and high-touch amenities,” said the team. “In catering to a tight knit community with a finite number of members, The Malin is able to provide tailored lifestyle management services while offering both the comforts of a home and the resources of an office.”

The Malin’s first location in Manhattan’s Soho, which opened in 2022, was longlisted in the small workspace interiors category of Dezeen Awards 2022.

The company has since added spots in Williamsburg and the West Village to its portfolio, making The Malin Wedgewood Houston its fourth.

Interior of The Malin in Nashville — The colour scheme throughout the club is warm and earthy, aided by richly toned upholstery and deep paint hues

Long-known for its thriving music scene, Nashville is now quickly growing as a destination for other creative industries.

Recent openings in the city include an outpost of members’ club Soho House – just down the street from The Malin – and a multi-venue dining and drinking destination designed by AvroKO and owned by Sam Fox and Justin Timberlake.

The photography is by Sean Robertson.

Reference

Architecture

First full-height timber wind turbine opens in Sweden

By Zarkon Group,29/01/2024

The world’s first full-scale timber wind turbine has started turning in Sweden, with a tower built by wood technology company Modvion.

The 105-metre-tall tower, located in the region of Skara, is Modvion‘s first commercial wind turbine tower, and follows on from a smaller 30-metre-high demonstration project the company completed in 2020.

While its rotor blades and generator hub are made of conventional materials, the tower is made of laminated veneer lumber (LVL), a type of engineered wood made of thin veneer strips glued together and often used for beams and load-bearing building structures.

Portrait photograph of a tall wind turbine against a bright blue sky — The tower of a wind turbine in Skara is made of engineered wood

The company says that this type of wood is not only strong enough to withstand the forces of a turning turbine, it is much more environmentally sustainable to build with than the currently used steel.

While wind power plays an important role in providing the world with green renewable energy, there are still ample carbon emissions created during their construction — in part because of the steel towers.

Modvion describes its wood towers as reducing the carbon emissions from wind turbine construction by over 100 per cent, due to the combination of a less emissions-heavy production process and the carbon storage provided by trees.

“Our towers, just in the production of them, they emit 90 per cent less than a steel tower that will do carry the same work,” Modvion chief financial officer Maria-Lina Hedlund told Dezeen. “And then if you add the carbon sequestration, then you actually end up with a minus — so a carbon sink. This is great if we want to reach net zero energy production, and we need to.”

Photo of the inside of a large timber cylinder, with a ladder going up the middle — The type of wood used is laminated veneer lumber

Hedlund, who is also an engineer, describes LVL as having a construction “similar to carbon fibre”, with strips of veneer just three millimetres thick sandwiched and glued together, giving it a high strength-to-weight ratio.

This lightness is a benefit, reducing the amount of material needed overall. With a heavy material, there is a “bad design spiral”, says Hedlund, as the weight of the tower itself adds to the load that it needs to carry.

And while some LVL has all their veneer strips facing in the same direction, Modvion uses its “own recipe” specifying the directions of the fibres, improving the material’s performance even more.

Photo of three people in work gear on top of an incomplete wooden tower — The turbine tower is the tallest so far built by Swedish company Modvion. Photo by Paul Wennerholm

The production process involves timber boards being made to order in a standard LVL plant and then delivered to Modvion’s factory. There, they are glued together into larger modules and bent into a rounded form in a step called lamination, and then very precisely machined to fine-tune the shape.

“In the wood industry, you usually see centimetre tolerances, while we are in the sub-millimetre scale,” said Hedlund.

The modular nature of LVL construction addresses another problem Modvion has observed with steel: that with turbines getting ever bigger to give more power, it’s becoming impossible to transport steel towers to site.

They are built as essentially large cylinders and transported by truck, but the base diameter desired for the tallest towers is getting to be taller than some bridges and roads can allow.

Photo of a giant module of curved laminated veneer lumber being engineered in a factory — The timber is laminated into modules at Modvion’s factory

“We’re now reaching a point where they will not get through anymore,” said Hedlund. “So we will see a transition in the wind power industry to modular construction, because this is the way to get them there. And one of the big advantages of building in the material we do is that it’s naturally built modular.”

While steel could also be built modular, it would require bolts rather than glue to join it together on site, which Hedlund says is a disadvantage.

“Bolts are not very nice when you have so much dynamic loading, because it will loosen over time,” she said. “So first of all, you have to have to put them in place which is a lot of work, and then you have to also service them over the lifetime.”

Photo of a worksite with a man in hi-vis operating machinery in the foreground and a large curved module being lowered into place in front of him — The modules were assembled and glued together on site

The Skara turbine has a capacity of two megawatts, which represents the maximum power output the turbine can achieve under ideal conditions. This is a bit lower than the average capacity for new turbines built in Europe.

On the outside, the tower has a thick white coating that makes it look similar to steel, and it’s rotor blades and generator hub, which are not supplied by Modvion, are made of conventional materials like fibreglass. This may change in the future, however, with another company, Voodin Blades, working on the technology for wooden blades.

Modvion was founded in 2016 by university peers David Olivegren and Otto Lundman. While its current focus is wind turbines, it is dedicated to wooden technology more broadly, and Hedlund told Dezeen that the team believes it has “the world’s strongest joint for timber construction”, which could also be put to other uses.

Another recent milestone for wind power came in the form of a wind-powered cargo ship, which had been retrofitted with two 37.5-metre-tall sails.

Reference

Architecture

Studio Gang nestles Kresge College expansion in Pacific forest

By Zarkon Group,14/12/2023

Chicago architecture firm Studio Gang has expanded a California college through the addition of mass-timber structures that were informed by how fungi grow in the wild.

Kresge College is a part of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Most of its campus was originally designed by American architects Charles Moore and William Turnbull in the early 1970s.

White topped roofs of buildings in California forest — Studio Gang has created an expansion of Kresge College in California

Studio Gang was tasked with expanding the footprint of the project along the northwest extent of its property, nestled in a lush Pacific forest.

Four buildings were designed to complement the existing structures – California modern-style buildings with stucco walls and splashes of colour – and the woodland environment. All of the buildings feature concrete podiums, which support load-bearing timber walls.

Glass window back lit with trees in the forest — The expansion includes four structures with mass-timber elements

“Our goal was to add new qualities to the sense of place offered by Moore and Turnbull’s design, rather than to replicate the architecture,” said studio founding principal Jeanne Gang.

“We wanted our expansion to retain the qualities of surprise and free-spiritedness that have defined Kresge College, while at the same time opening it up to students of all abilities, the incredible natural ecology of its site, and the larger university community beyond.”

The expansion’s centrepiece is an academic centre with a series of protrusions that jut out asymmetrically from a core. Three simple, bow-shaped structures were placed to its southeast to house students.

Timber facing — The residential buildings were clad in timber

The Kresge College Academic Center sits on an uneven site next to a steep ravine. To navigate this site, the studio used methods it said were inspired by the growth patterns of polypore fungi, by simultaneously “stepping down the slope and flaring out”.

The centre’s flared form was clad in a metal curtain wall, rendered in a light colour to reflect the mid-century buildings, while the faces of each protrusion feature floor-to-ceiling glass trimmed with timber.

Wooden buildings among the trees — The residential buildings have a bow-form to preserve trees

At the centre is a large lecture hall, surrounded by a triple-space atrium with smooth concrete hallways and elevated walkways that connect to the four protruding spaces.

These hold classrooms and utilise the slope with three storeys that line up with the two-storey central structure.

The largest of these protrusions features a smaller lecture hall on the top level, with a roof that slopes up and out in a sizeable lip.

Three storey atrium — The academic centre has a three-storey atrium

The smaller residential buildings are all bow-shaped, a move the studio said was implemented to preserve as much of the redwood tree groves on the site as possible.

These buildings are five storeys tall and have a central core set back from the wood-clad exterior, with large window boxes on each end that create sheltered patios on the second storey.

The recesses between the window and the facade were painted bright yellow, which resonates with the colours used in the Moore and Turnbull designs.

Like the academic centre, these structures have concrete podiums with load-bearing timber walls. However, cross-laminated ceilings were included and in many places, these elements were left exposed.

The bottom floors of these residential structures were left open for social spaces and amenities, while the top floors hold habitations: about 100 students can live in each structure.

Mass timber student center — Mass-timber elements were left exposed

Studio Gang also made interventions in the landscape, restoring and expanding the paths already connecting the campus and a long pedestrian bridge that crosses the ravine next to the academic centre. It also added a square at the building’s primary entry.

Studio Gang has completed a number of high-profile projects this year, including museum expansions in Arkansas and New York City. Kresge College is part of the studio’s move towards using more mass timber, and it has been selected to complete a theatre using this material in the Hudson Valley.

The photography is by Jason O’Rear.

Project credits:

Design architect and architect of record: Studio Gang
Contractor: Swinterton
Expansion plan associate architect: TEF Design
Interior designer: Studio Gang
Structural engineer: Magnusson Klemencic Associates
Structural engineer: MME Civil + Structural Engineering
Landscape architect: Joni L Janecki and Associates Landscape Architects
Landscape architect: Office of Cheryl Barton
Civil engineer: Sherwood Design Engineers
MEPFP: Introba
Sustainability consultant: Atelier Ten
Lighting consultant: Horton Lees Brogden Lighting Design
Acoustic consultant: Salter
Envelope consultant: Simpson Gumpertz & Heger
Wayfinding and graphics: Cheng+Snyder
Code consultant: Holmes Fire
Quantity surveyor: Directional Logic
Accessibility consultant: Jensen Hughes
Elevator consultant: Elevator Consulting Associates
Technology consultant: TEECOM
Theater consultant (for Kresge College Academic Center): The Shalleck Collaborative
Food service consultant (for residential buildings): Ricca Design Studios

Reference

mass timber

Studio Bark designs water-powered Breach House in UK countryside

UK’s “most sustainable” neighbourhood receives planning approval

Co-working members’ club The Malin opens wood-filled Nashville location

First full-height timber wind turbine opens in Sweden

Studio Gang nestles Kresge College expansion in Pacific forest

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