November Timber Talk series 2016: A wooden world -- by Andrew Waugh

okay hello

okay let's make a start and thank you

for coming and today is the talk from

Andrew wolf and I think you must have

received my email saying that Andrew is

the pioneer in total team building and

we are known for over the world so I am

very delighted to have Andrew here so I

will I won't take too much time so I

hand over to Andrew excellent thank you

very much myself okay right yeah thank

you

hi everyone so we're war thistleton

architects where I practice in

Shoreditch in East London and that's

Fran that she went to Bath and and I

think a couple of other people did as

well anyway so we are practise that

build mostly in timber and the reason

why we build in timber is it's about

climate change

it's about greenhouse gas emissions and

carbon dioxide emissions and about the

impact that construction has on climate

change so just kind of just really

simply the kind of the sketch the

originator of all the work that we're

doing now and everything that we're

excited about really comes from wanting

to take this on board wanting to really

- if you accept the notion of climate

change which I do I'm assuming that most

of you do then the idea that that as

architects our architecture carries on

almost regardless you know we just kind

of we keep on building like Zaha or LEED

skinned or Gary but we put solar panels

on the roof the idea that that would be

what this climactic event what this

terrible event or this terrible

issues surrounding us what that did to

our architecture what that did to the

architectural expression of our

contemporary culture to me was a

nonsense so and that idea faced with the

notion of a world housing crisis the

idea that actually we're moving from a

you know from a largely agrarian world

culture to a largely urban world culture

the idea that we need to sort of start

housing billions of people in the next

few years in the UK alone I mean to

pensee which which political party or

which which magazine you read but you

know say between two and three hundred

thousand people a year two hundred sorry

and three hundred thousand homes a year

and last year we built one hundred and

ten thousand so we're kind of like

there's lots of work to do lots of

houses to build and we need to build

them in such a way that we don't

contribute to climate change but that we

help mitigate climate change so this is

us in in two thousand three and a bit

smaller then and we built mostly as you

can tell I'm sure we built mostly

nightclubs and restaurants and house

extensions and kitchens and that kind of

thing and we started and in 2003 the

first set of planning guidelines came

out in terms of environmental awareness

and eco homes it was called and eco

Holmes said that if your building wasn't

near a bus stop then you would need

double glazing however if it was near a

bus stop you'd be ok now as an approach

to climate change that struck us as

rather sort of short-sighted and the

idea that somehow that this would you

know that there were just small changes

that we could make this massive in

Bandung problem coming to water seemed

seem to us fairly ridiculous so we

started to dig a little deeper and think

about not just energy use but also the

building materials that we build with

the process of construction how that

works what you know what kind of impact

that was having now if you go back to

this one a third of all greenhouse gases

are caused just by concrete just by the

production of some

and concrete so cement was the one thing

the international protocol and climate

change called out as being a major

contributor to greenhouse gases through

the use of energy and through its and

through the the mining of aggregates and

of and of Portland lines so in 2003 we

were looking around for different types

of construction materials for different

types of innovative technologies to

build with and a year out student in the

office said to me that there was this

this little kind of hippie place down in

South London that we should go and check

out and where they had some alternative

you know construction materials and so

we went down there and there was the

nice lady with a hempcrete you know and

somebody else with their straw bale

technology not an urban solution if you

ask me anyway and there and the other

corner was the Austrian guy selling what

looked to us like jumbo plywood and with

these kind of amazing sketches on the

wall behind him showing what could be

done with this fantastic new material

and so we took him at his word and we

had this little project Exton street in

near Waterloo which was a nightclub for

classical musicians I've never been back

anyways 45 square meter two-story

extension to a 17th century building

near Waterloo and it was completely

landlocked so we've been concerned for

some time how we were going to get the

building materials through the building

or over the building and we upon kind of

discovering this material we realized

that we could that actually you know

this comes out of the factory with the

doors all cut out perfectly measured to

size and we could just Crane it in over

the roof and two guys could just screw

the whole thing together and on a

Saturday afternoon in 2003 we built this

three-story afternoon 45 square meters

and I watched it go up and it was

perfect was really beautiful the idea

the notion of the construction process

of the practice of architecture involved

in this tiny little building was really

really exciting and so

for the next few years we researched and

designed and interrogated people about

CLT and now this is CLT I don't know if

everybody knows what cross laminated

timber is but just really really briefly

its secondary grade timber from the

outside of a pine usually a pine tree a

European spruce so the timber from the

outside of the tree the stuff gets that

made that gets made into paper and

cardboard that gets chipped for fuel

that kind of thing so really sort of

fairly waste product and what they do is

they finger joint long planks of about

75 millimeters by 25 millimeters into

long lengths they lay them out and they

spray them with a PVA so water-based

adhesive like the kind of stuff that you

put on your hands and you go like that

it kind of all sort of wrinkles up so

PVA adhesive and they laid down in

perpendicular layers on top of each

other right angles and they're built up

in layers to the performance that they

need to to meet whether they're floor

slabs or walls or whatever they are so

less than 1% adhesive and not a

formaldehyde free adhesive and nothing

else just the pine and the adhesive now

this was material was invented in

Austria in the 1990s because they

weren't doing anything with their timber

all their trees that they had were going

to seed and so the word went out from

the Austrian government finds something

to do with our trees and so thankful

University and Gratz came up with this

as a notion a couple of factories were

starting to produce this in the 1990s

including this one which is KLH in

central Austria now you can see these

these panels here coming out of the

factory about 16 meters long by 3 meters

wide and anything from about 70 mil

thick to about 500 mil thick depending

on what they needed to do now you can

see all the doors are cut out roof

profile here window cut out and then

these factories all the cutouts here go

to the biomass generator and the whole

factory is off grid so in fact in this

one it even powers the village where all

the workers live as well so in 2008 we

had been honing this argument and

when doing lots of research and talking

to lots of different engineers and in

2008 we really had a pretty clear notion

of of how you build and what you can

build with this material and we got this

job in Shoreditch on a council estate in

the sort of in the in the part of

Shoreditch where people don't go and and

it was an old pub site and it was very

clear that from an extrusion of the site

plan to about nine stories that we'd get

about four flats a floor and so you know

we'd get about thirty units on the site

so we are cement to the local authority

and we said to local authority we've

been studying this material for a long

time and you're planning requirement is

for us to reduce the carbon footprint of

this building by ten percent now if we

build this building in timber just the

amount of carbon that's stored in the

building itself it's equal to the amount

of carbon that the building will admit

for 250 years so actually by that 10

percent reduction it's over two hundred

and fifty years sorry 420 with 25 years

worth of energies so we said to them if

we did that would you allow us to use

that calculation as the as the reduction

in carbon as part of your planning

policy and to our amazement they said

they would so we went back to our client

and having agreed our fee we we had what

we began to call in the office over the

years the timber chat which is where we

agree our fee and then we say to them

let's build it in timber and they say no

and we got kind of we got quite good at

that argument and we were able to save

them we'll what we've done is we've

sketched up a building in concrete and a

building in CRT and we know that if we

build it in CLT it will weigh about a

fifth of what a concrete building weighs

it will take about it will be about 50

percent quicker to build it'll be about

15 percent cheaper

we won't need to make any of the other

carbon offsets for the local authority

other than actually building it in

timber we won't need a tower crane we

can build a whole lot from a mobile

crane from the back of a truck and also

we will be building a building that

rather than a concrete building which

let's not forget a concrete building is

not a building made of concrete a

concrete building is concrete floor

slabs on columns with usually some kind

of light weight wall structure around

the outside so in effect what you're

doing when you build a concrete building

is you build one building made of wood

then you pull the concrete into it and

you take the first building away you

love to the second building and then you

clad it with the third building so

rather than making three buildings what

we can do with CLT is actually make an

entire structure from the cross

laminated timber so that building then

it's like a honeycomb structure so every

every floor slab every wall the external

the external wall the Excel facade the

lift cord a stair core everything is

made of cross laminated timber the walls

are about 150 mil thick and the sorry

the floor slabs about 150 mil thick and

the walls are about 120 mil thick so we

were able to this should be a film is it

gonna be a film there you go so this is

definitely the part short if you haven't

been to this is the stairs here lift

call going up here and the slabs going

around so the Austrians arrived by truck

on a Tuesday morning they put panels up

on a Wednesday and Thursday they worked

a three-day week and they built a story

a week so four people built the entire

building in 27 days

so you can see it going up here note our

crane so over a thousand tons of carbon

dioxide safeguard within the timber

structure itself note our grain a tower

crane cost for a developer if you talk

to them a tower crane cost about eighty

thousand pounds a month's to higher and

you need to put in special foundations

for to build a tower crane for a tower

crane to set in to so not having a tower

crane ISM is a major advantage to any

contractor so we were able to obviously

we were able to persuade our client to

build in CLT to build this building in

CLT and we and they sold all of the

flats in an hour and fifteen minutes so

this is the this is the internal

structure here you can see this one of

the double-height spaces here this is

the building going up so you can see the

the whole thing is put together fastened

together with 75 millimeter galvanized

shelf brackets and 100 millimeter screws

you can see in the ceiling here these

are the little ties to the electrics so

the electric cabling that runs through

the ceiling the electrician explained to

me that when you build when you're an

electrician when your apprentice is an

electrician in the UK you spend about

the first 18 months hammer drilling into

concrete and then after about 18 months

your shoulder joint disintegrates and

when it's disintegrated then they teach

you about electrics so he explained to

me that actually the notion of building

in these buildings

not just of so not just in designing

these buildings but actually in the

construction of these buildings that the

contractors the builders working in

these places are safer and happier it's

a better work environment a better place

for a builder to be so and much much

faster so some of the advantages that we

hadn't realized that we hadn't

calculated in terms of the speed was

actually the people that came in

afterwards so all the people that did

the dry lining the plaster boarding all

the people who did the electrics and the

plumbing so much quicker so much easier

to do so once we had finished the entire

structure we covered the whole thing

with plastic or which for many people

don't from that to that

is a

it's a bit of a tragedy and bit all but

where's all the timber gone it's so

useful and I think for us the idea is or

the mantra was from the very beginning

that we need to demonstrate that timber

can be a viable alternative to concrete

and steel that going back to the notion

of actually building with a carbon store

that rather than allowing our practice

to be a peripheral one to be one that

kind of you know there's sort of

sustainability practices with the kind

of you know the hair shirt and the kind

of sort of the buildings that look very

kind of like their sustainable buildings

we didn't want to be involved in that

we've never wanted to be a peripheral

practice we want to be a mainstream

practice working with the big house

builders making real differences to the

sustainability and the environmental

awareness of how we build all of our

homes in the UK not bird-watching

centres or National Trust museums on the

outside of town but actually real and

safe so when we were working through the

building regulations working with our

clients our clients said to us we don't

want anybody to know that this

building's made from timber and so

you're like fine not a problem at all

and just a little article in The Evening

Standard about it but apart from that we

won't tell anybody and the idea of

covering it up and plasterboard actually

allows us and it means that we don't

have to paint any of the CLT with

interessant

we don't have to fireproof the timber

itself so actually the lifecycle the

cradle to cradle idea at the notion of

the timber is that it's at this material

after it's useful life can be used can

be reused for buildings can be pulped

for paper can be chipped for fuel unlike

if you paint the timber with intumescent

and then that goes to landfill at the

end of its life so the idea was that we

kept the material at something that was

breathable that was fully recyclable and

that for our fire protection we look to

plasterboard now the idea that we will

be doing this doing that forever and not

actually learning as we go as people

other architects including ourselves

better understand the way that the

system can work that we won't kind of

leave more

exposed but when finished it looks like

all the development flats that our

developer client was after and as I say

they all sold in eighth in an hour and

15 minutes so going back over the job

less waste so this is the this is

seriously this is our site waste after

nine weeks they had the contractor had

this kind of old guy with a little

rolled up cigarette in the corner of his

mouth with a broom with nothing to do on

site for nine weeks so completely quiet

the whole building goes together with

cordless screwdrivers

so no jackhammers no grinders no cement

mixers no constant kind of scurrying

around with masks and gloves and goggles

very very quiet very very clean process

fewer deliveries so an 80% reduction in

construction traffic onto the site and

lightweight so 5th of a concrete

building which means less foundations

and less impact locally so he wrote a

book about it afterwards because there

been so many people being asking us

questions and because there was a

recession so he wrote a book other works

do and it's still available on Amazon I

get about 30 P if you buy one so and we

we went out and we started talking about

it

and to our amazement a lot more people

were interested in it than we thought

would be so this article in The New York

Times and others encouraged us to take

this research and to really run with it

to begin to talk to people and teach

about the research that we've done and

to our amazement this really this really

kind of had producers to a groundswell

of interest behind this project and this

followed in London with many other

projects so this is a lend-lease project

Halden Cheerilee Alex de Ryker awfully

horrid Mona and Morris here with lots of

different projects coming through nearly

500 projects in the UK now built in CLT

and then across the world as well so

we've worked consulting in Australia in

Italy and Canada Austria on different

projects as well

so really suddenly the beginning of

something suddenly to be killed

beginning of a new idea about how we

might build buildings a new system if

you like if construction and

architecture so in 2012

finally with two friends of mine I found

a site to build my to build my a house

on and with my two friends Jason and Dan

we bought this piece of land here and we

sold our flats and our furniture and

everything we had and bought the site

got planning consent and ran out of

money so we managed to persuade we serve

so we sold the lower ground floor here

and then we went out for tender to the

Builder and we we agree to tender price

with the Builder and then sat the

Builder down and explained him that we

didn't have any money so we managed to

persuade the contractor to lend us the

money to buy the building to pay him

with so that we so and he accepted so we

designed so we so we paid him back once

we finished the building so this

building was a photographic studio for

Dan here and flats for Dan and myself

and Jason it was so to be supposed to be

me and down and Jason were down and

Jason fell out so I had to move in the

middle but they're friends again now but

they so it was all kind of so but Dan

it's a photographer and Dan needed a

studio which had to be a minimum of nine

metres wide six and a half meters high

and 23 metres long and with no columns

and no beams so how would we produce

that how would we allow make that space

happen and still got our flats on the

top of the building which is what we

wanted so what we did was to use the CLT

to begin to use the CLT in a way in

which you wouldn't be able to use any

other kind of material so the notion

that a wall in cross laminated timber is

a long beam because if you if you

imagine that rather than carrying the

load straight down it can carry the load

all the way along as a being

so we use the party walls between each

one of the flats here as it has a deep

beam so like a series of boxes if you

like that are then supported off the

front and the rear elevation which act

as giant trusses either side and that

way we were able to hold the flats up

above the photographic studio here and

have that studio is a completely open

space so you can do that because of the

light weight of the material as well so

the whole thing is really tightly tied

together 500 cubic meters of CLT so it's

about a 1/3 of the CLT per square meter

that we'd used on Murray Grove mostly

because I was paying for it myself

that's quite expensive completely open

plan as I say and this is the building

going up so you can see this is the

studio here the other thing that we did

is that rather than cut holes in the CLT

panels we've begun to use the CLT in

terms of to use the CLT where it's

needed most so you can see this is where

the vertical loadings are going here

using this as horizontal here and here

is the lintels across so rather than

cutting holes out we're actually cutting

down strips of CLT and using it in that

form so this is the photographic studio

in here hard to really kind of

understand how quite how massive that

space is we had about a year and a half

ago we had the English rugby team in

there doing one of those photo shoots

where they all kind of jump up and go

like that and I was fast asleep up here

just above the fire alarm just there and

I didn't hear a thing so that's us the

first Christmas so clad in sweet

chestnut and I think that what that

building begins today is to begin is to

begin a quest it's begin a conversation

or you know in my mind a kind of you

know something completely different

something completely new so if you think

about a hundred years ago when people

discovered reinforced concrete when the

idea of reinforced concrete came back to

the fore so you had called Busey a and

the other modernists talking about a new

kind of architecture that new kind of

architecture came from a new

material and we now have a new material

we now have a suite of new materials in

engineered timber and the kind of

architecture that that new material will

begin to produce to begin to propose I

think is what's particularly exciting at

the moment so what will these new

buildings look like so this is Bolton

Lane it's the building that we're

working on at the moment just finishing

up and this is this is proper this is

kind of like this is what we wanted to

do this is high-density high-rise

housing where 10 was at 10 storeys 121

flats and three and a half thousand

square meters of offices and retail so

right in the middle of Dalston in north

london very very urban very tight

environment if we built the building in

concrete it would have weighed 10,000

tons of concrete in timber it's less

than 2,000 tons hundreds 170,000 square

feet 16,000 square meters about 800

people will live and work in this timber

building which is about so four thousand

cubic meters of timber which is two and

a half thousand trees so just over three

trees 3.125 trees per person in this

building now we give away one of these

buildings every day and a half on the

tube in London in terms of free

newspapers and free magazines so the

timber that goes to make this building

is given away every day and a half on

the tube so this is us this is a CGI of

the building finished now that building

when complete will save 7,000 tonnes of

carbon dioxide from going into the

atmosphere

now 7,000 tonnes is 24 music festivals

105 thousand cars 12 kilometres in the

car Facebook for three hours or 24

billion phone charges or one for the

year 570 million pots of tea produced so

an awful lot of common assets so you can

see the building going up here and as I

said really tight site you can see the

timber coming in here this is us in the

summer so phase one which is seven

storeys finished

- at the back here about halfway up and

this is us about six weeks ago so this

building will go up in just over a year

about eighteen months the whole building

will go up yeah so the buildings that

we've been working on that this is a

hackney where we where we work and where

we live live and we've the more we kind

of like research the more we've become

involved with local politics with local

politicians with the planning office

really begun to infect our borough and

become part of the area that we're in

never did I think when I was the

architecture school that I'd become like

a local like a local architect you know

like a local docks or something but this

seems to have happened to us or seem to

have happen to us in Shoreditch so we

now have greater concentration of tall

CLT buildings in Hackney than anywhere

else in the world we have a mayor in

Hackney who is proposing and promoting a

timber first planning policy so that all

buildings in the borough must be built

in timber unless you have a good reason

not to build an in timber so this is

really exciting stuff we've started

working for Berkeley homes so the UK's

biggest house builder we built this

building and we build this building five

storey eighteen bucks you know what we

built the building in three and a half

we've got the entire structure in three

and a half weeks on a five week program

so we saved a week and a half of a

program that they didn't think to be

done 100% CLT so no concrete in this

building at all right from the ground

all the way up in CLT and now this

building is being monitored so this

building is like you know has electrodes

all over it inside and out the acoustics

the thermal use air tightness Energy's

all being all being monitored through

the building and also the people that

have bought these flats have also agreed

to be monitored as well in quite

difficult to evaluate but monitored in

terms of their well-being of actually if

they've

you're happier if they think they feel

happier being in a timber building

because this is kind of an interesting

thing that's coming through is also the

feeling of well-being that people are

expressing to us living in a natural

environment rather than in a in a cold

concrete or steel environment living in

an environment where in a hydro scopic

material that that soaks up moisture

from the atmosphere releases moisture

into the atmosphere but is actually more

friendly in acoustic terms that the

Austrians have done tests on on

schoolchildren in just imagine cone so

they and which monitoring their heart

rate and their stress levels and their

performance at school and clearly are

able to demonstrate that children in

timber schools are you know happier and

healthier and and nicer than children in

concrete schools so this this

understanding destroying this feeling of

actually that feeling of well-being that

feeling of kind of like how do these

buildings not only affect the architect

how the system not only affect the

architecture the construction process an

idea around climate change but also and

but also the people that live there the

people that work there in these

buildings and how they're affected by

this different construction system now

excitingly we're starting to work on

larger and larger schemes so because of

the weight of the material cuz the

weight of building in this building

being so much lighter than concrete

we're able to build on sites which

previously weren't open to constructions

so we have Kingsland shopping center in

Dalston which is where the Eurostar runs

so the Eurostar runs directly under the

shopping center which meant that they

could only build two or three stories in

concrete which meant that they didn't

bother doing anything so that the

Matalin has survived for years untouched

in Kingsland shopping centre but this

gives us the opportunity to look at this

look at this site for redevelopment

so 650 homes and 35,000 square meters of

commercial and residential development

there and now this year we've started

working for legal in general so I'm sure

everybody's heard of legal in general

has seen the umbrella sign around 70% of

adults in the UK

have some level of financial dealing

with legal in general they insure

everything you know they are the big one

of the biggest global funds so they have

a seven hundred and fifty billion pound

fund in the UK alone so this is a

massive fun about three or four years

ago they started they stopped putting

all their investment in stocks and they

started building buying land and then

they decided to develop some of this

land and then when they looked at

development they looked at construction

and they thought well that's an awful

process that's just terrible we don't

have anything stupid builders so we

should prefabricate them we should

prefabricate them in a factory and if

we're going to do that we should do it

ourselves and if we do it ourselves the

best way to do that is in cross

laminates timber and if we're going to

get cross laminated timber then we

should make our own cross lemon it's

timber so earlier this year they bought

a factory in Yorkshire 850 thousand

square foot factory and by summer next

year they'll be producing a hundred and

forty thousand cubic metres of cross

laminated timber which means that UK

will have the world's biggest CLT

producer and we are starting to make

modular homes in this Factory of

fourteen production lines where we're

making timber homes in this factory

which we're taking to site on the back

of a truck and building up into massive

housing which is just so exciting this

takes all that kind of that idea of the

kind of you know Tony Garnier in the

city industrial in the idea of kind of

like those conversations that I've had

with Henry Ford 100 year or so years ago

you know about the idea of a production

line of kind of a machine for living in

about how we can actually begin to take

this arcane construction process that

we've been locked in for hundreds of

years out and off the construction site

and into a factory controlled

environment where actually people can

work undercover where we can build

buildings effectively cost-effectively

and of high quality

so always before it's failed always

before the dream of modular housing has

failed its failed because people have

used poor materials they thought the

only way to do this is to use lighter

and lighter material less

and less material and to build smaller

and smaller housing and to build only

one type of housing so they said we've

done modular housing but you have to

have it and it's made of cardboard and

you can touch the ceiling and it'll fall

apart in ten years time and as long as

you're happy with that it'll be okay

so that's been the previous kind of

notion of modular housing where it's

what we have here is we have a factory

floor we have our material and we can

make whatever sides our box we can get

down the road so the first thing we do

when we get a site is we look at the

postcode we phone up the haulage company

and we say how big a truck can you get

to this postcode and they come back and

they say we can get a five meter wide

truck to this postcode so we go back to

the factory we go back to our drawing

boards and say great we're gonna make a

five meter wide modular housing so we so

this one here for instance is 3.2 meters

this is a pocket unit so this is a one

bed one person affordable housing model

in central London

so we can build these for fifty thousand

pounds and have them delivered to site

with all the windows all the bathrooms

pre fitted all the kitchen pre fitted

and these are solid buildings these are

not buildings when you hit the wall or

when you you know when you flush the loo

that your neighbor can hear these are

buildings with solid four inch thick

solid timber walls buildings built of

timber so this is what they look like

and you know what I kind of so we build

all this stuff in BIM so suddenly you

know in 13 years we've gone from a

practice that that designed nightclubs

to one that has just been named BIM

practice of the year I never thought

that would happen to us

but you know what the fascinating thing

with this is the exciting thing is this

is that what we draw what we're drawing

on our machines is what ends up on site

now that hasn't happened for a long long

time

you know the idea of the architects is a

kind of sort of like the vague dandy at

the end of the table who decides what

color it's going to be and everybody

else will get on and build it you know

that it's gone that notion is gone

because the building's that we're

building the decisions that we're making

about where where the cuts are made

those are the same files that we're

drawing those files migrate all the way

through to the factory

to the CNC machine and that's what's cut

out oops so this is one of the first

buildings we're doing this is in South

London and welcome so one bed two

modules two beds two modules three beds

four modules and these go on site here

and that whole site will be complete in

six months construction in six months

420 flats and we've also started to

build other types of building so not

just housing this is an office building

which we've just been instructed on in

Shoreditch again and this is a

headquarters for forum for a for a tech

company and this building will we go

from glulam columns and beams with a

solid CLT core and solid CLT floor slabs

a hundred thousand square feet ten

storeys the whole building is programs

garden in ten months from start to

completion and this building really is

about interestingly I think it's when we

pitch this idea of doing a timber

building to a City of London office

commercial office developer and we

pitched them to a timber building the

idea was that we said to them well

actually if you look at most of the

companies that are going to rent these

buildings their major problem it's not

how much rent they pay their major

problem is losing people is actually

training people up and having a fast

turnover itself because people don't

like working in the buildings that

you've all been building for a hundred

years or so you know people want to work

in nice spaces people want to work in

good healthy light environments so this

is completely naturally ventilated as

well as being very light and very open

as a building and we started building

student housing so this one's in

Brighton for for an American developer

and this one so this one begins to talk

about curves so with fasting the fasting

the corners here with sips panels with

timber sips panels on the external

facade and then CLT floor slabs CLT core

and then CLT share walls through

we also started working in in other

materials not just CLT so also

maintaining the kind of the notion that

as a practice we're looking at

low-carbon technologies or technologies

that sequester that whole carbon within

them and for bushi cemetery which is

just north of London we're building this

in R and Earth so we're taking the soil

from the cemetery and we're using that

soil bringing in aggregates and sands

and tiny little bit of cement and we're

building the buildings from the soil

from the cemetery so those are going up

at the moment and we're building abroad

so now we've got a project just got

planning for two weeks ago in Paris and

another one in the States and another

one in Sweden as well and we've been

working with the US government as well

and you know typical Americans they kind

of watch us doing it over here and then

think oh that looks like a really good

idea we'll do that and then suddenly do

it 10 times bigger and 10 times faster

but in the Senate Obama's Secretary of

State for agriculture pushed through a

bill to promote the notion of tall

timber buildings based on Murray Grove

so there's this little kind of building

in the council estate in Shoreditch

and the notion of that building has been

promoted in the Senate and put forward

as a bill to promote those buildings and

we started working with other architects

so alongside architects like Renzo Piano

and Richard Rogers and we're working

with sugar Rubin so she could have and

the Japanese architects and we're

building tower just adjacent to City

Hall across from the Tower of London in

in potter's field Park which is very

exciting especially because we're

working with an engineer this engineer

who is a Swiss engineer who is about 150

years old and he's like Yoda from Star

Wars or something

and he he's a genius and we're doing

things like so in this building we're

not using screws or nails to tie the

timber together we're using dowel you

know a little kind of like little dowels

like in a piece of Ikea furniture and

what they're doing is they're milling

we're doing is we're milling the holes

for the dowel exactly the same size as

the dowel and then we're getting the

dowel and we're putting it in a

microwave and you put it in a microwave

for two seconds

take all the moisture out of it and then

it just slides into the hole and they

accepts the moisture from around it and

it's locked tight

and nothing we're doing is for the

acoustic separation is rather than using

concrete or different types of

insulation we're actually just using

sand so a building on the floor slabs

we're building boxes and we're just

filling them full of sand and that's how

we get our acoustic separation between

each floor and as the building building

vibrates the sand forms the sand sort of

forms a curve like this which actually

helps to support the vibration of the

building reduce the vibration of the

wing so here we are so this year working

on five stories for Berkeley homes

finished ten stories in Dalston 15

stories consented in Paris and 20

stories that we're working on at the

moment with IKEA so really exciting

times for our practice and we have 23

live projects in timber at the moment in

the in the office and and are looking

and hoping for more but this is uh this

is the photograph that we took into

Hackney planning when we first started

talking about Murray Grove and the

notion of a kind of of a future of a

sustainable and environmental aware

architecture and this is the number of

seeds that it took to grow the trees the

Bill Murray Grove thank you

[Applause]

[Laughter]

you'd really think so wouldn't you and

you know what we we are we constantly

constantly looking for problems we're

constantly looking for you know what can

be the issues what can go wrong you know

we are constantly working with people

like the BRE and trader and nhbc around

fire issues around you know around

acoustic issues rather but honestly it

performs so well in all those situations

the real problem that we have is

perception the real issue that we have

is a construction industry that has been

doing it in this doing it in the same

way for a hundred years and to try and

change that process to try and disrupt

that process if you like it's really

really difficult so you know what we'll

get so far and I'll go with it

you know I'll meet with the developer

and the developer be really excited

about it I meet with the planners

they'll be really excited about it the

developer will appoint contractors to do

the job and the contracts will say yeah

we could do that we could do it in

concrete you know and if you do it in

concrete then I'll you know then there's

less risk we don't know about this

timber nobody's you know only a few

buildings you know so it's that kind of

conversation so it's always about

perception I'm sure that by the time

that you're in practice it'll be a

doddle and everybody will be doing it

but you know but for now I think that

you know I think the the rise of this

technology is excellent is it will be

exponential so people like legal in

general and Berkeley homes this year

taking on board CLT will change the

field completely

that's reduced apparently so I mean you

can imagine that that that the I that

that is vastly reduce the capacity of

that to happen is vastly reduced and the

idea that you you know that we promote

that by using clay board you know and

that kind of thing which we have done in

my house for instance is you know will

perform much better but you still have a

performance apparently in terms of

moisture levels with even with in

drywall with regular emulsion paint so

I'm sorry I'm informed but yes I to

completely take your point so the idea

is the notion is that there will be a

combination of timber from Scandinavia

and from Germany Austria and also from

the UK so we do have forests in the UK

we have the largest man-made forest in

Europe in the UK and kill the valley but

but the quality of the timber is not

fantastic but actually if you imagined a

CLT panel in many ways like an i-beam if

you have the top and the bottom layer

are strong then the central layer can be

a lot weaker so we we have a we have a

full-time timber engineer in our office

but we do work with a number of

different engineering practices and I

think that what for us what part of the

process of design has changed with this

material as well I think that for a long

time the relationship between architects

and engineers has been a fairly

unhealthy one you know it's been a sort

of a problem-solving relationship where

the architects comes up with some sort

of whimsical form and then passes it to

the engineer to solve for the problem so

rather than that being a kind of a

collaborative case

kind of design team you know it actually

becomes one of kind of you know problem

solver and dandy we we work with we do a

lot of work with our ups we do a lot of

work with ramble in Cambridge who who

have a particular kind of understanding

for timber we do a lot of work with

engineer who are a smaller London based

practice who concentrate on timber

engineering we we work with tecnico with

Matthew Wales whose you know it was our

engineer on Murray Grove so we work with

probably about six or seven engineering

practices and before we work with them

we bring them in to the practice and we

we talk them through a number of

projects we're looking for we look for

engineers who are interested and excited

about the opportunities of mass timber

construction and then we really kind of

would take them in if you like

I like engineers

yeah yeah well that's the kind of it's a

it's a good question

you know on Dalton Lane we clad Dodson

Lane in brick so you have a 21st century

lightweight structural system and you

plaid it with a kind of Roman structural

material and which is completely

counterintuitive and incredibly

frustrating I freely admit and when I

sat in the planning meeting and the

planner said oh it's a shame you can't

do it in brick my client said oh I'd

love to do it in brick and I sat there

between the two of them going oh it's

crazy you can't do that you know the

thing is like I was saying before you

know one of the things one of the

reasons why I started with that the

issues around climate change and that if

you like is the sketch so the idea that

you know that we can demonstrate the

timber as a viable alternative to

concrete and steel that's that that's

the kind of yet the essence of what it

is that we're trying to do and it's an

evolutionary process feels revolutionary

but it has to be evolutionary for it to

work you know my concern is always that

you know whenever you see in the

magazines you know you kind of turn the

pages of the AJ or whatever magazine it

is and you get some skyline with a

massive Tower colored in brown you know

and with an arrow that says timber tower

you know anything what actually is it

and is there ever gonna get built no and

then that scares me because I think oh

god you know what architects are so

fickle that this year it's timber next

year it'll be something else you know so

our kind of what we're really trying to

focus on is to change that the nature of

the construction system you know change

what we build in you know I have lots of

exposed timber in my apartment in my

flat

and we continue to kind of to do work to

demonstrate that we can expose more of

the timber but the essence is and the

truth to the material in that sense is

that it's about the structure and it's

about what we build our buildings of so

yes I agree with you but

give me some time and I would do it

better yeah yeah yes yes yes they are

part of the carbon calculation so the

the carbon emissions of the transport of

the timber from Austria is part of the

cut is part of the carbon calculation

that we make always and it's still

actually less than the carbon emissions

of concrete that would be transported to

the site because there's so much more

concrete transported so on on Dalston

lane where 93 deliveries of timber to

site and we would have been over 800

deliveries of concrete so so you know so

yes it's something that we include for

and it's something we thought very

carefully about before we started

building in it you know the idea that we

do that something sustainable and that

you know but in order to do that we'd

have to bring it on a truck from Austria

you know felt wrong but actually have to

start somewhere and now that we have the

factory coming up in Yorkshire the idea

that it's going to start being produced

locally

you know we've encouraged or helped to

kind of like - helped an industry to

form to make cross laminated timber and

when we started when we built excellent

Street there were two factories in the

world making about 50,000 cubic meters a

year of CLT by the end of next year

we'll be producing a million cubic

meters of CLT worldwide with factories

in New Zealand and Australia and Papua

New Guinea and Russia and Japan and the

states in Canada and you know so it's

like from where we were 13 years ago to

where we are now yeah you know yes

mm-hmm yes so we have um we have a job

at the moment we have a factory in

lemmings and spa and we're making the

factory from beach glue lab so using a

hardwood glulam which is you engineer so

GL 70 so it's hard as anything

we're spanning 12 and a half meters with

a 500 mil beam so it's really it's good

stuff the other thing that we are we're

working on with that same with the same

manufacturer is the notion of of

laminating hardwood veneers or hardwood

laminates into into glue lands in order

that we can create cellular beams as

well so that for commercial projects

where we need to run services through

the beings so that we're not increasing

the floor to floor that we can run it

through by framing the openings with

hardwood so the lots of different you

know there's a impugn you Guinea you

know they're trying to make and CLT out

of eucalyptus so you know different

people are doing it in different ways

you know in Cambridge at the moment

they're working with richard rogers on

laminating carbon fiber into CLT in

order to in order to strengthen any

connection details your joint so i think

that you know what we're just starting

this is a brand you know this is just

starting this process

well we're certified you know like any

other construction material for 60 years

with a BBA certificate just like

concrete or steel framed buildings um if

you build my view is if you build a CLT

building well you know there shouldn't

you know we shouldn't have to worry

about it there's a church where my mum

comes from in Essex that's 600 years old

you know built from Bill from timber so

you know there's no reason why you know

or you know the pagoda in Kyoto as well

as pretty old so you know there's some

very old timber buildings if the

building is designed in CLT so I didn't

really talk much about that notion but

if but just it just we look to use as

little CLT as we possibly can and the

way in which we do that is by learning

what the architectural how that you can

how the architecture can affect the

amount of CLT you use so that so

long-winded answer but the basis of that

is that because CLT is really light wind

load is always your issue so you build

robust buildings stout little will if

you build with the understanding that

you're going to be if you design for CLT

knowing that you're gonna build in CLT

we should be we should half the

construction time on site we should be

able to build in half the time you can

on a concrete building if we take which

we have done buildings that are designed

in concrete the you know that might have

some issues around might make it

slightly more complex to build in CLT

then we would generally expect to save

about a third so significant time

periods

well why it's glad like that

well funnily enough the one we went to

planning the planners wanted us to do it

and brick wanted us to clad in brick and

when I said why do you want to fail you

know and you go through the arguments

about you know it's context and it's

what people used to planner said to me

well actually we think that there's

something about a facade being broken

down into lots of little pieces which

makes it more acceptable to the human

eye so it's like okay fine if I can do

that but with the different material

then you know so what we did was we took

him we took a Sun path animation from

around the site and we we took that up

and we kind of wrapped it around the

building pixelated it and wrapped it

around the building and that was the

notion behind the facade coming and

actually it sounds a kind of you know

quite an abstract thing to do and

actually it came from an idea from the

girl ha richter painting but it sounds

sort of an abstract kind of process to

go through but when you go to site and

you see it in context it works you know

you kind of you see it on the skyline

and there's something about it just sort

of fits in to the skyline where it is so

do you know what it's a bit of a Marmite

building I can see where you're going

with this but uh which is fine you know

some people absolutely love it and like

with everything I've ever built I kind

of you know sometimes I love it and

sometimes I can't even go near it

ok reduced

yeah for now for now I like the idea of

ash piles but we're working on that know

what we generally do is on a few

projects we you know what you need to do

is you need to take timber off the

ground you know so any failures and

damp-proofing them damp proofing or

whatever you know it's just good

practice you look at an old you know

shed in Switzerland and it's always kind

of taken off the ground there's always

sort of stones underneath it so the idea

is you take the timber off the ground

usually we do that by making a flat slab

at first floor level and building the

timber structure off that and that

allows us to have a different program on

the ground floor in terms of you know

lobby's bin stores offices whatever you

know retail on the ground floor so we

generally do that but we have built it

where we you know where we have a series

of 150 up stands all around the plan and

then we build the timber straight off

that but that's more complex

when we build the buildings they can get

wet and what we found is you know if

they get if they get you know if they're

in if they're not protected for two or

three weeks it's fine you know and they

were because their moisture because the

timber is moisture because it's kiln

dried has the moisture mostly moisture

taken out of it it's kill and dried down

to about eight percent eight to ten

percent so that changes the cellular

construction of the timber itself to

sell in relation so it's able to

actually to dry out quite easily however

what we have found if it's wet for a

long time so year or so ago we had a

contractor who was fighting with another

contractor and they left the building

out in the snow and we had a couple of

inches of snow on top of the timber for

a couple of weeks and it was exposed

throughout three months and we found in

that situation there was quite a lot of

swelling and the timber actually just

slightly changed you know the nature of

it's a list of the of the actual planks

and each floor slabs weld and even when

it went back down to about ten percent

they were still swollen by about two

millimeters so it's not a lot but it's

if you're you know if you're building

and bricks is still something to can

take him it's a consideration so

generally we don't foresee a problem

with that we haven't had any issues

around mold we had a building that was

that was completed about ten years ago

which wasn't plumbed in properly and we

had a phone call last Christmas because

of the floor tile in somebody's bathroom

had cracked and we went to the site

lifted up the floor tiles and we found

that there had been no silicon around

the edge of the shower and for ten years

the shower had been the water from the

shower been going onto the wall and

falling straight down onto the floor

behind the shower tray and the floor had

become sodden and for about a meter

around the shower tray

we had about 20 mil of wet rot and then

beyond that for about two or three

hundred mil we had some dry rot around

her

but it hadn't gone down below the first

laminate so what they were able to do is

to scrape away all the rot paint it with

an antifungal treatment and then lay

some plywood over the top and retile

which took a day so you know the leaking

tap the badly fitted windows so all of

those things you know I think can

produce problems in co2 but they can

produce problems in every kind of

construction material you know so at

least with CLT you can chop a bit out

and put a new bin so you can't do that

with concrete so we we our rule of thumb

is seven and a half meters four and a

half meters is preferable up to seven

and a half meters Whitmore Road is nine

point two seven meters has a CLT span

it depends what MIT depends what kind of

mass timber using were using CLT or glue

lambs or you know Richmond ice-skating

rink in in British Columbia in Canada

has a glulam which is I mean there must

be what 40 meets 45 meters you know so

you can get some big spans we have to I

mean up over on Whitman Road we haven't

on Whitmore road that's that's a 9 and

1/2 meter span but it's also held by the

party wall beings so we would generally

look to between four and a half to seven

and a half meter spans

yeah no questions are good questions

where I came

so we've done it a few different ways

we've done it where we just carry the

slab straight outside and we use the

extension of the slab because you don't

have so much cold bridging issues there

or not it's not that there are no cold

bridging issues but they have vastly

reduced so we've we've we've cantilever

the slab we've attached a balcony on the

outside with plates and we have internal

balconies as well and we've we've done

all three of those and they've all

they've all worked well so fairly

flexible know the orientation so the

primary load path of the CLT is the top

and the bottom laminates which run

parallel and so we try and use the CLT

to to its best advantage so in the in

the walls we generally use it

horizontally and in the lift cause we

generally use it vertically so we try

and we try and kind of you know we're

trying try to be clever about it okay I

thought that was the last question I had

that conversation with Matt Leininger

about a year ago and that and I agreed

that there'd be a few things that we

would do differently and we reckon we

could probably reduce the amount of

timber in the building by about 20 to 25

percent

and one of the ways in which we could do

that would be to reduce the wall

thickness as we go up the building and

the other way would be where we have

floor slabs it's a you know simple

platform construction so where the walls

the floors go on top walls go on top and

you build up like that one of the issues

with that is we have some vibration

flanking over the party wall so that

means that we had to build up the

thickness of the floor slab so what we

would do is and what we did on Dolson

Lane is to actually have one floor slab

that connects into just two Phillip

Phillip piece on top of this and then

reproduce it so anyway lots of little

kind of tricks but we think that we

would reduce the timber by about 20

percent

yeah yeah so we're trying to we try and

get better every building

[Applause]