Ever higher profile publicity

Huge advertising hoardings for timber are springing up around the UK. But they’re not the first fruits of the relaunched Wood for Good promotional campaign, described by its chairman John Kissock.

These giant billboards are in fact buildings constructed from prefabricated cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels. And they’re becoming more numerous, adventurous in scale and design and more eye-catching all the time – as a result they’re also gaining an increasingly prominent public profile.

Proof of the latter is that they were the subject of a splash lead story in the Environment and Energy pages of this week’s Sunday Times business section.

The centrepiece of the article was the Stadthaus in east London, a nine-storey apartment block built entirely in CLT from Austrian manufacturer KLH, which TTJ and sister title Timber & Sustainable Building (T&SB) have both featured extensively.

Andrew Waugh of the architects Waugh Thistleton said that he was initially won over to CLT by its ease of handling and rapid build potential. His practice was working on a project near Waterloo Station with very poor access. If the building had used concrete, it would have meant lugging the stuff through the concourse. Instead it opted for timber and the panels were simply hoisted over the station and slotted together. Mr Waugh described the experience as “an epiphany”.

“The building went up so quickly and precisely, and it was more beautiful than concrete and steel,” he said.

Because of the level of prefabrication and relative lightness of CLT, he added, the Stadthaus took just 49 weeks to complete, against the estimated 72 weeks for an equivalent structure in steel and concrete.

Sunday Times journalist Oliver Shah also focused on the environmental advantages of using wood. Building the Stadthaus (also known as Murray Grove) in CLT rather than “conventional” materials, he wrote, saved over 306 tonnes of carbon, equivalent to the block’s carbon output for 20 years.

According to the article, local authorities are also recognising the eco merits of building with wood, waiving requirements for using renewable energy technology in timber structures because of their inherent greenness.

In total, it said, 100 CLT projects have now been completed in the UK. These include the St John Fisher School in Peterborough, and Norwich Open Academy, plus smaller projects like Cavendish House in Cambridge, all of which we’ve profiled in T&SB.

And in the next few years, CLT and other timber-based construction is set to reach still greater heights.

At the TTJ Medite 2016 Forum Wood Futures Conference in 2008, Mr Waugh said his practice, having also completed a cinema and synagogue in CLT, was planning a 25-storey block. This was put on hold in the recession, but is reported to be still in the pipeline.

And the Sunday Times said that architects Lewis Bart Rawson have designed a 30-storey timber tower, albeit steel frame reinforced.

Of course, this wood building phenomenon isn’t going to directly benefit everybody in the timber trade. Not too many merchants are stocking giant CLT panels – in fact, they’re not yet made in the UK. But these increasingly dramatic and publicised structures are a great shop window for timber; highlighting its environmental credentials and its performance and safety in modern, demanding applications.

In short, this is all fantastic grist to the relaunched Wood for Good mill.