Hardwood CLT structure to star at London Design Festival

The structure, to be one of the festival’s landmark projects, will be sited in the Sackler courtyard of the V&A from September 15. It will be comprised of a maze-like series of interconnected spaces that overlap and intertwine, and will encourage visitors to re-think the way we design and build our homes and cities.

The three-dimensional structure will be built out of a flexible system, made of 17 modules of American tulipwood cross-laminated timber (CLT) with digitally fabricated joints. Like a piece of flat-packed furniture, it will arrive as a kit of parts and will be simply and quietly assembled in under a week.

Because it is built out of modules, the pavilion can be taken apart and reassembled in a new home after the London Design Festival.

“The main ambition of this project is to publicly debate how environmental challenges can be addressed through innovative, affordable construction,” says Andrew Waugh, co-founder of Waugh Thistleton.

“We are at a crisis point in terms of both housing and CO2 emissions and we believe that building in a versatile, sustainable material such as tulipwood is an important way of addressing these issues.”