Tag: Wooden Architecture

This Office Building’s Wooden Frame Was Built Without Fasteners or Glue

Posted on by Jeff Easterling

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Though it’s certainly beautiful in its completed state, photos of this office building during the construction process are almost more interesting to look at than those of the finished product. Japanese architect Shigeru Ban designed an incredible interlocking wooden frame for the 7-story Tamedia Office Building in Zurich, Switzerland, which fits together without the need for any glue or fasteners. But luckily, much of that frame is still visible through the structure’s glass envelope.

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Housing 480 employees, the building integrates traditional Japanese craftsmanship with modern European design. This Japanese take on traditional timber frame construction is soft and rounded, fitting together in a way that’s almost reminiscent of a child’s toy. This frame upholds airy, open spaces, and many of its structural elements are entirely visible, providing character that’s unusual in an office building of this size.

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Shigeru Ban is known for his innovative architectural work using paper and cardboard tubes, and his structures are almost always highly sustainable and recyclable. In this case, using timber as the main material was a natural choice to meet and even exceed Switzerland’s strict environmental responsibility mandates, as the lowest producer of CO2 during its manufacturing process of any widely available building material.

Prepare to be Impressed: 50 Architectural Details Made of Wood

Posted on by Jeff Easterling

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Some people say wood is ‘having a moment,’ pointing out the rising popularity of this material in architectural projects all over the world. But considering the long history of wooden structures, which have been in use since the earliest days of human civilization, it’s clear that wood is simply an enduring classic that will always shine, no matter what flashy new materials may come along. While it’s true that new building codes approving the use of wood as a structural material in high-rise projects has led to a new wooden building boom, this ‘trend’ is here to stay.

A collection of 50 construction details that stand out for their clever use of wood over at ArchDaily just proves this point. The world’s most-visited architecture website rounded up an impressive gallery of recent projects, from hotels and cabins to birdwatching observatories. Here’s a brief selection from their list – check out the whole thing at ArchDaily.

Endesa Pavilion / Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (top image and below)

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Belvedere for Koblenz / Dethier Architectures

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BCN Re.Set – Identity Pavilion / Urbanus

wooden architecture identity pavilion

Tasting Room at Sokol Blosser Winery / Allied Works Architecture

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Brooklyn Garden Studio / Hunt Architecture

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Nine Bridges Country Club / Shigeru Ban Architects

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Timber City: A New Trend of Tall Timber Architecture on Display in Washington D.C.

Posted on by Jeff Easterling

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The National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. doesn’t usually do current events exhibitions, but its curators say that all changed this year with Timber City due to a coming evolution in architecture. Namely: the spread of high-rise wooden structures, which are taking off across the world so fast, we can barely keep track of which one’s currently holding the record as the highest. Timber City examines tall-timber construction as it expands into a contemporary trend, comparing it to growth in the use of reinforced concrete in the early 20th century.

The exhibit shows off a wide variety of new architecture being made with new types of wooden construction techniques, including the use of cross-laminated timber (CLT). While its safety has already been tested and demonstrated convincingly enough to prompt new building codes and the embrace of architects, this type of tall timber architecture won’t be accepted as mainstream until consumers appreciate it for its physical beauty, according to Professor Susan Piedmont-Palladino, one of the project’s curators.

“This fall, the Museum challenges the notion that wood is an antiquated building material when it opens Timber City,” reads the project’s website. “The exhibition demonstrates the many advantages offered by cutting-edge methods of timber construction, including surprising strength, fire resistance, sustainability and beauty. Drawing attention to the recent boom in timber construction worldwide, Timber City further highlights several U.S. based projects, including two winners of the U.S. Tall Wood Building Prize, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in partnership with the Softwood Lumber Board and the Binational Softwood Lumber Council.”

The exhibit went up on September 17th and will remain in place through May 21st, 2017, so if you get a chance to visit Washington D.C., pop into the National Building Museum and check it out.

Pictured: The 130-foot-tall Framework Building in Portland, Oregon

White Pine, Swiss Mountain Style: Modern Cliffside Home with a View

Posted on by Jeff Easterling

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White pine goes modern for a simple cliffside residence in the mountains of Weinfelden, Switzerland by the firm K_M_architektur. Situated on a sloped plot overlooking the town, with distant views of the Austrian Alps, the house consists of several stacked pine-clad boxes in an arrangement that almost seems to cascade down the hillside, creating a series of rooftop terraces. Facing south to open it to the stunning scenery, the home features lots of glass and indoor/outdoor space, with a private suite on the upper floor.

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The architects chose white pine for its minimalist appeal, set off by black and white furniture and interior wall finishes. Not only is it used for the exterior cladding, it’s carried into the home as the primary floor and ceiling material. The strong horizontal lines of the beams carry through from the terraces to the enclosed common spaces, making them feel like one big space. Sliding glass doors enhance the effect.

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Unusual for an alpine home, the stacked box design offsets each level to maximize space and take in as much sunlight as possible for natural heating. The white pine finish outside the house will be allowed to weather with time, fading to a silvery grey that mimics the shade of the mist-enshrouded mountain peaks.

How Can Timber Help Combat Climate Change? Case Study Confirms Benefits

Posted on by Jeff Easterling

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The immediate sustainability benefits of timber compared to steel and concrete, the two other widest-used building materials, are pretty obvious. Most people are already aware that wood is the only one of the three that’s renewable, and that it’s able to trap literal tons of carbon from the atmosphere, absorbing it for the duration of its lifetime so it doesn’t accumulate in the atmosphere. When it’s time for it to be replaced, wood can be reused in all sorts of creative ways, including reclamation as floorboards and furniture, before it is finally burned as fuel. And finally, timber requires far less energy in its extraction and recycling processes than steel and concrete. But for a long time, strict limits on the height of wooden buildings has kept timber from meeting its full potential.

That could all change very soon as wooden skyscrapers get green lights around the world, and studies are enacted to confirm even more benefits to using timber as a primary building material. One example is a recent life-cycle analysis on how timber can help combat climate change through the construction of compact wooden cities sourced from well-managed sustainable forests. Forest management in the European Union is leading the way to show it’s possible to produce more forest than what’s being harvested, and an integrated modern operation using today’s advanced timber technology can ensure that the benefits of carbon absorption outweigh any hazards of over-harvesting.

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An article by Eduardo Wiegand on ArchDaily goes into the details, explaining how incentivizing the use of timber in construction could catch on and lead to a sustainable architecture revolution of sorts. “It is a fact that dense cities are significantly more sustainable than sprawling cities; therefore one path to more sustainable forms of living might be the planning and regulation of compact wooden cities,” says Wiegand.

“…the challenges of global warming and emissions of CO2 could be solved partially though the densification of cities using timber as the primary material of construction. In order to achieve this, structural systems and timber-based products must continue to develop, and the forestry industry should be prepared to respond to a higher demand for wood in the future, which can be achieved by increasing the productivity and efficiency of the extraction of this renewable resource.”

Read more at ArchDaily.

Pictured: Michael Green Architecture’s entry to the Reinvented Paris Competition and Sou Fujimoto + Laisne Roussel’s proposal for a tall wooden building in Bordeaux

Open House: Complex Structure Made of Nothing But Wood

Posted on by Jeff Easterling

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Architecture students in Switzerland are getting a hands-on education not only in spatial possibilities when structures are freed from the limitations of conventionality, but also the use of wood as a primary building material. An international group of students at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) known as the ‘ALICE Laboratory’ has erected an architectural installation that’s basically a free-for-all in terms of its interior layouts, allowing participants’ imaginations to run wild. They call the result, House 1, “an unfolding evolution of a space that invokes questions, contains possibilities, and is open for interpretation, rather than a singular homogenous architecture.”

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The aim was to create an open-air, pavilion-style structure containing a ‘genetic code’ for future developments, filled with examples of construction layouts and styles that can be repeated or expanded upon as needed. This modern interpretation of balloon-frame timber construction uses long vertical 2”x4”s for the exterior walls, with the long studs extending uninterrupted from the foundation to the roof, which is left unfinished in this case. Balloon framing was popular through the 20th century, until it was overtaken by platform-framing as the building method of choice. Assembling a balloon frame is described as being similar to weaving a basket, with pieces put up one at a time, but in an efficient sequence that reduces labor and equipment needs.

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That sequence is what we see here, drawn out to almost cartoonish proportions, with one piece of wood after another added on in regular sequences that are broken up by fun and unexpected additions like a hole in the second floor filled with netting to create an oversized hammock, built-in shelves and framing for vertical gardens. The idea is that this sequence can be recreated quickly to create houses or simply temporary open-air pavilions for special events.

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It’s cool to see modern architecture students doing innovative things not only with wood, but old-fashioned timber construction methods.