The Wood Awards shortlist has been announced and, once again, is a showcase for timber in construction and furniture. Thirty-two projects have made the cut and this includes 20 “exceptional” buildings.

Commercial & Leisure

Shortlisted in the Commercial & Leisure category are the City of London Freemen’s School’s 25m competition swimming pool, which features a cross-laminated (CLT) envelope and glulam portal frames.

Hawkins Brown designed the building and Wiehag supplied the Austrian spruce engineered timber.

Wiehag also supplied one of the most complex timber structures built in the UK, The Macallan Distillery & Visitor Experience (see TTJ Timber Construction Supplement, Summer 2018). A 3x3m lattice of beams is imposed orthogonally on the form-found shell of the roof, which has an area of 13,620m2.

The roof package comprised 350,000 separate pieces and the timber species is Norway spruce.

Ukrainian birch features at the Fallhogey Studio, a project to house an expanding rural architectural practice by and for McGarry-Moon. Brooks Bros supplied the timber and the glulam was manufactured by Old Manse Joinery.

Brooks Bros also supplied timber for the Storeys Field Centre & Eddington Nursery, along with DF Richards. The structure features spruce glulam portal frames, manufactured by Just Swiss, that rise from a European oak panelled base and pass in front of a backdrop of ash veneered panelling. American white ash also stars in a spiral staircase. CW Fields was the joinery supplier, while Marley Eternit provided the cedar shingles that clad the structure.

Education & Public Sector

American cherry lines the Susie Sainsbury Theatre that now forms the heart of the Royal Academy of Music, while the new recital hall is entirely lined in pale, limewashed European oak. Timber was supplied by Hardwood Sales, Brooks Bros and Lathams and the joinery contractor was James Johnson & Co.

Barn 6 was the joinery contractor for the Sultan Nazrin Shah Centre, which includes a large lecture theatre, a student learning space, seminar rooms and a dance studio. The timber flooring is from Junckers while Benchmark and David Colwell Design were responsible for the furniture. Inwood Developments and Brooks Bros supplied the project with European oak and Siberian larch.

Streatham & Clapham Schools opted for Austrian spruce CLT for its new sixth form centre in order to minimise disruption to the school calendar. KLH UK provided the CLT and the curved glulam columns, which mimic the trees outside.

The West Court project includes a timber café and new extensions linking existing buildings. The installation of the oak glulam was by Eurban and the wood suppliers were Just Swiss and Neve Holzbau. The oak windows are by Thomas Sinden Joinery, while other joinery was by ABS Joinery.

T Brewer supplied western red cedar for the 150m2 of extracurricular spaces for Belvue School. Structural engineer Timberwright was tasked with building the new Woodland Classrooms, which act as a gatehouse from the school to the adjacent woodland.

Interiors, Private and Small Project

Oak and birch plywood are much in evidence in the Interiors category.

Millworks Timber supplied birch plywood for 61amr, while Riga Ply supplied Latvian birch plywood for Marie’s Wardrobe. The Barbican Mezzanine project called for European oak, supplied by Tin Tab, the Department Store, Brixton used European green oak supplied by Carpenter Oak and American red oak was the star of the show for The Vortex, the huge space at the main entrance of Bloomberg’s new European headquarters in London.

The private projects feature timber and veneers from around the globe, including English, Slavonian, French, Danish and German oak, Austrian spruce, British Douglas fir, Siberian larch, Latvian birch and Scandinavian spruce.

Wessex Timber supplied the Blackheath House; L&G Forest Products the Kent Downs House; and Arnold Laver the Old Shed New House.

The Small Projects feature European oak from Quercus and SRO, who supplied the Dewsbury Road extension; larch, southern yellow pine and paged pine plywood from New World Timber, who supplied the Kudhva cabins project; and birch ply and Douglas fir from WUP Doodle, who supplied the Look! Look! Look! Pavilion project.

Furniture

The Wood Awards also includes three Furniture categories, Bespoke, Production and Student Designer. Twelve projects were shortlisted, including work by John Makepeace, Sebastian Cox and Benchmark.