The rising popularity of mass timber products in Canada and the United States has led to a rediscovery of fundamentals among architects. Not least Indigenous architects, for whom engineered wood offers a pathway to recover and advance the building traditions of their ancestors. Because timber is both a natural, renewable resource and a source of forestry jobs, it aligns with Indigenous values of stewardship and community long obscured by the 20th century’s dominant construction practices.
Foster + Partners is leading massive refurbishment works on a historic building in Madrid. The renovation project that will put in place an office building for Acciona, seeks to revitalize an abandoned old industrial building built in 1905, generating over 10,000 square-meters of new spaces.
Since immemorial time, humans have constructed their shelter and homes using wood. Gradually these structures grew more complex, but wood has continued to play a fundamental role in architecture and construction. Today, especially due to growing concerns about climate change and carbon emissions, wood has been regaining significance as an important building material for the future, if used consciously and sustainably. Wood’s structural performance capabilities make it appropriate for a broad range of applications—from the light-duty repetitive framing common in low and mid-rise structures to the larger and heavier, often hybrid systems, used to build arenas, offices, universities and other buildings where long spans and tall walls are required.
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Stefano Boeri Interiors has unveiled images of his latest circular wooden installation, in an open-air setting of contemporary art. Entitled TREE-ROOM, the project in which “humans and living nature come together, between meditation and contemplation”, is designed for Arte Sella and is located in the garden of Villa Strobele in Val di Sella, in Northern Italy.
Team V Architectuur, an architecture office based in Amsterdam, is designing the new Dutch timber hybrid head office for DPG Media at the Amstel Business Park in the Netherlands. In collaboration with DELVA Landscape Architecture/ Urbanism for the landscape and outdoor space, the project will generate a 46.000 square meter of healthy and sustainable working environment.
Putting together competition entries from all around the world, this week’s curated feature for Best Unbuilt Architecture showcases inspiring approaches and concepts. Submitted by our readers, the selection highlights uncommon proposals, part of international contests. While some are winning projects, others received honorable mentions.
Serie imagines stacked timber pavilion-like offices, Schlaich Bergermann Partner, LAVA, and Latz + Partner design new pedestrian and cycle bridge over the Neckar River in Heidelberg, Germany and Aidia Studio create an Oculus in the Emirati desert. Other competition entries include a landscaped avenue by ZXD Architects in Hangzhou, a community school in Egypt by Hand Over, a winning pavilion for the Singapore’s Archifest 2020 by ADDP Architects and OWIU Design Studio; and a Baha’i House of Worship by SpaceMatters in India.
Morris + Company has just received planning approval to create a timber extension to Walter Segal’s Highgate residence in London. The transformation aims to revive the original architecture of the house, built by the architect himself in 1965 and introduces a contemporary intervention to the iconic village home.
Waugh Thistleton Architects or WTA has won an international design competition in collaboration with In Praise of Shadows and Land Arkitektur, to deliver the new head office of Gotlandshem, the national housing association of the Swedish island of Gotland in Visby, Sweden. The project, low carbon, and low impact building will be a multifunctional place, providing a healthy hub for businesses, accessible by the whole community.
A new six-story net-zero carbon office development in Vauxhall, London, UK has been granted planning commission by the city council to move further. Designed by FCBStudios, the timber workspace named Paradise, will transform an abandoned site on old Paradise street, and replace the existing disused roastery.
Constrained by a lack of transportation and resources, vernacular architecture has started adapting the distinct strategy of utilizing local materials. By analyzing projects which have successfully incorporated these features into their design, this article gives an overview of how traditional materials, such as tiles, metal, rocks, bamboo, wooden sticks, timber, rammed earth and bricks are being transformed through vernacular architecture in China.
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Earlier this month, Steven Holl Architects designed and created their project Obolin, a sculpture made locally from a single panel of cross-laminated timber, or CLT. It was made for and is now exhibited in the Art Omi Sculpture and Architecture Park, an art center that seeks to explore the intersection of architecture and art through the production of pavilions, installations, landscape interventions, and built environments designed by architects.
The Atlassian Sydney Headquarters, the soon to be “world’s tallest hybrid timber building” is being built in Sydney, Australia. Designed by SHoP in partnership with BVN, the 40-story high tower will provide, once completed in 2025, a new and innovative space for technology giant Atlassian.
This article was originally published on The Architect's Newspaper as "Architects apply the latest in fabrication, design, and visualization to age-old timber."
Every so often, the field of architecture is presented with what is hailed as the next “miracle building material.” Concrete enabled the expansion of the Roman Empire, steel densified cities to previously unthinkable heights, and plastic reconstituted the architectural interior and the building economy along with it.
But it would be reasonable to question why and how, in the 21st century, timber was accorded a miracle status on the tail-end of a timeline several millennia-long. Though its rough-hewn surface and the puzzle-like assembly it engenders might seem antithetical to the current global demand for exponential building development, it is timber’s durability, renewability, and capacity for sequestering carbon—rather than release it—that inspires the building industry to heavily invest in its future.
Grafton Architects was selected as the winning firm to design the Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation at the University of Arkansas. In collaboration with Modus Studio for the planned campus design research center, the design on the project is scheduled to begin this summer.
Vincent Callebaut Architectures has imagined The Rainbow Tree, a modular mass timber condominium tower in Cebu City, Philippines. Revealing the cultural and natural Filipino heritage, the project, named after an iconic and colorful tree from the Philippines the Rainbow Eucalyptus, was entirely conceived in a way to reduce the carbon footprint of the building.
It may sound like a silly rhyme, but it’s true: wood is good. As a construction material, wood is beautiful, practical, and versatile. The great strength, light weight, and excellent insulating properties of wood make it ideal for many applications, especially at a time when timber is delivering efficient solutions at different scales. Despite these benefits, wood is highly susceptible to decay, especially when used outdoors.
Centennial College, Ontario's first public college, has collaborated with DIALOG, Smoke Architecture, and EllisDon to design and build the first zero-carbon, mass timber higher-education building in the country. Scheduled for completion in 2023, the new gateway structure will bring together Indigenous and Western cultures in both form and function.
A team of five firms have come together to design the first large-scale timber building in Western Australia. Lyons Architecture is working with Officer Woods, The Fulcrum Agency, STH and Aspect Studios on the new academic building at Murdoch University in Perth. Constructed from locally sourced timber, the four-story project will include offices, learning spaces, and informal gathering areas.
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