A big impact at Ecobuild

I’m not sure if it was wow or blimey! But I definitely said one or the other when I stopped dead in my tracks and gawped as I made my way into the Ecobuild sustainable construction exhibition this week. I must have said it quite loudly too as one of the show staff stopped to ask if I was OK. She was concerned that I was having a turn and wasn’t far wrong.

What had caused my eruption was the opening gambit of the Extreme Timber feature at the huge show; the 200m² swooping glulam pavilion created by engineered wood products specialist Pasquill, in conjunction with an architect, engineer and various other timber suppliers. The shape, apparently, was a hyperbolic paraboloid. All I know is that it was big, curvaceous and made a hugely impressive entry to the main timber-focused area of Ecobuild, which also included The Timber Trade Federation-organised Timber Works section of stands.

In fact, it made such an impression that I quite forgot that minutes earlier I’d been crammed with fellow show visitors on the Docklands Light Railway to the point of asphyxiation. What that experience highlighted was that Ecobuild is now the white hot ticket among construction exhibitions, which, in turn, made the impact made by the Pasquill Pavilion still more significant.

This work of cutting-edge engineered wood construction wasn’t the only stand-out timber exhibit at the show either. UPM Biofore’s plywood and timber structure also caught the eye, as, among others, did the stands of timber building specialists B&K Structures, Cove Structures, design software, insulation and engineering products business ITW Industry and architect Bill Dunster, who featured his NaturalZed timber and strawboard house.

The combined effect created by these displays was that timber is very much a mainstream construction material. More than that, it presented it in ultra-high specification applications, often dovetailed with and complementing other modern building media. In short, timber and wood products came over to visitors, who included a much increased number from abroad this year, as thoroughly 21st century and forward looking.

What makes making timber’s mark at Ecobuild still more significant is that it not only attracts movers and shakers from the construction and building specification sectors, it has also become the event to be seen at for politicians. The theme of low carbon sustainability is like a magnet to our leaders who increasingly need to wear their green hearts on their sleeves. So the list of speakers for the hundreds of seminars, presentations and conferences at the event reads like a who’s who of Who’s Who. What better audience to present with prime examples of timber to the forefront of sustainable construction.

Rupert Scott, marketing manager of TRADA – whose own stand featured the striking winning structure from its inaugural student timber design contest – went as far as saying that Ecobuild may have marked something of a watershed in presenting timber and wood products as state-of-the-art sustainable construction “solutions”. It showed the timber sector not only capable of delivering what today’s building sector needs, but knowing how to market its products as well as any competing material producers.

The hope is now, he added, that we will see even more of the same, perhaps even better, at Timber Expo, the industry’s own new show at Coventry’s Ricoh Arena in September.

There’s a prospect to really whet the appetite.