The winner of the 2018 Wood Awards top prize is Storey’s Field Centre & Eddington Nursery in Cambridge.
The results of the annual competition were announced at a presentation held at Carpenters Hall, London on November 20. The ceremony was attended by architects, designers, construction professionals and timber industry representatives and was hosted by David Hopkins, Timber Trade Federation managing director.
Storey’s Field Centre & Eddington Nursery won the Commercial and Leisure category, as well as the Mears Group Gold Award and was described by Stephen Corbett, chair of this year’s buildings judging panel as having “a winning combination of architectural merit, structural ingenuity and flawless execution”.
“The best building rose to the top,” added Mr Corbett.
The 100-place nursery is arranged around three sides of a landscaped courtyard. On the fourth side, is the civic scaled community centre including a 180-seat main hall. The principle rooms are lined in oak panelling.
The main hall, influenced by the dining halls and chapels of Cambridge colleges, uses an exposed, articulated timber structure. The slender spruce glulam portal frames spring from the oak panelled base and pass in front of a backdrop of ash veneered panelling; the tones of the timber gradually lightening up the height of the space. A structural ceiling of layered ash joists, battens and veneered plywood conceals air extract routes for the hall’s passive ventilation strategy.
The hall provides a venue for a range of activities and its acoustics can be adjusted to suit. At the west end, an ash spiral stair is a sculptural element wrapped by a curved veneered ash plywood balustrade. The nursery’s turret roofed classrooms are clad in western red cedar shingles, as are the soffits to the covered nursery cloister.
The species used in the building include American white ash, Canadian western red cedar, European oak and spruce. Suppliers and contractors included n’H International (glulam structure); Spiral UK and David Gilbert Joinery (spiral staircase); Marley Eternit (WRC shingles); Brooks Bros; DF Richards; and James Latham.
Winner of the Education & Public Sector category was The Sultan Nazrin Shah Centre in Oxford, which houses a large lecture theatre, a student learning space, seminar rooms and a dance studio. “This is a building of tremendous quality and atmosphere, where every detail has been thought through,” said judge Ruth Slavid.
Timber species include European oak and Siberian larch and the suppliers and contractors included Barn 6 (joinery); Benchmark and David Colwell Design (furniture); Junckers (flooring); Inwood Developments; and Brooks Bros.
The Interiors winner was the Royal Academy of Music Theatre & New Recital Hall, which judges said had real “wow-factor”.
The 309-seat American cherry-lined Susie Sainsbury Theatre now forms the heart of the Academy, while the 100-seat Angela Burgess Recital Hall is lined in pale, lime-washed European oak.
The suppliers and contractors included James Johnson & Co (joinery), Hardwood Sales, Brooks Bros and James Latham.
Old Shed New House, a timber framed and clad home nestled within the landscape of north Yorkshire, scooped the Private category prize.
This project saw an existing agricultural shed transformed into a gallery for a lifetime collection of books and art. The steel portal frame and ground-slab have been enlarged and infilled with a new timber frame clad in varied widths of shot-blasted timber and galvanised steel.
Arnold Laver supplied the project with Siberian larch, Latvian birch and Scandinavian spruce, while Image Developments Northern Ltd was responsible for the joinery.
The Small Project winner, Look! Look! Look! was praised by the judges for its sense of fun. The birch ply and fabric structure is a pavilion within an 18th century walled garden and is a contemporary version of a folly. It is made of 90 rhomboid timber cassettes with fabric pulled over.
Birch ply and Douglas fir was supplied by WUP Doodle, who also did the CNC cutting.
The 2018 Structural Award winner is multi-award winning Macallan Distillery & Visitor Experience in Speyside, the pinnacle of which is the 207m-long 13,620m2 engineered timber roof.
“This unique roof unites architecture and engineering to create one of the UK’s largest timber structures and is the crowning glory of the new distillery,” said judge Nathan Wheatley.
A 3x3m lattice of beams is imposed orthogonally on the form-found shell of the roof and all the timber elements were fabricated by Wiehag in Austria using advanced CNC machinery.
The Judges’ Special Award went to Woodland Classrooms, Belvue School, Northolt, which was praised for providing its schoolchildren with “an unforgettable, life-changing learning environment”.
T Brewer supplied the project’s western red cedar and the structural engineer was Timberwright.
The three Furniture categories saw Cleft – a series of cabinets made from different Japanese hardwoods – win the Bespoke section. Other furniture winners were Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby’s Ballot Chair, made of European oak in the Production category, while Ellen Svenningsen won the £1,000 Student Designer prize for Objekt Bord, an assembly of two components – an upright curve and a circle in birch plywood.
Other major sponsors of the Wood Awards are the American Hardwood Export Council, Carpenters’ Company and TRADA.