View of Forte (below) from adjacent apartment building.  Note the clean construction site, only four builders and the crane to the right which simply lifts the CLT panels into place.  The black plastic wrapped cube to the right of the building is a pre-fabricated bathroom, made in Brisbane to top quality European standards.

Panels on the back of a truck, delivering from the Lend Lease warehouse (below), ready to be lifted into place.

The CLT panels are pre-fabricated in Austria and brought to Melbourne in shipping containers through the Suez canal.  They are stored in Lend Lease’s warehouse at the end of North Wharf Road.  It is a little like a giant flat pack delivery from Ikea!

Paintings by local primary school children depicting the ‘house of the future’ on display at the Forte site.

A cold, windy day at docklands in Melbourne.

Read more about Forte

The Southward Primary School extension (below) is another KLH cross laminate timber build designed to hold 7 classrooms and an admin room. CLT not only stores carbon, but it is incredibly quick and easy to install.  On site work began just 8 days ago clearly demonstrating the speed at which CLT can be put together.  In this time there have been only 4 chippies, a crane driver at work.  The site is clean, safe and efficient.

The panels of CLT were prefabricated in Austria and driven to London (below)

The big panels lend themselves well to the size of the classrooms.

King’s Place Concert Hall is a steel framed building within a building to elimate noise and vibration from the Piccadilly line.  Both the balcony and stalls are lined with European oak-veneered panels.  All the wood comes from a single 500 year old oak tree which stood in a forest in the Spessart region of Germany.  The tree yielded over an acre of veneer.

The wood has been placed to ensure ultimate acoustics. Architect Paul Jolly explains ‘there was evidence that timber areas help with the tonal beauty of chamber music.  Timber can be moulded easily into details to replicate appropriate acoustic geometries.

Quirky fact for the day – London has 8500 double decker red buses and 100 bus garages.

Built for Lord Rothschild, Windmill Hill at Waddlesdon Manor (below), was designed as an archive and study centre with supporting offices and storage. Completed in June 2009 the property took 21 months.

Paying tribute to the location’s working past is the select choice of materials, including oak windows and shutters, rendered walls, wood cladding, and zinc roofs, with walls 1.5m thick in some places to establish a stable internal environment.

‘We didn’t just want to drop an alien object beside the farmhouse.’ said architect Stephen Marshall.  ‘We wanted it to look like a piece of sculpture, not tacked on.  The giant triangles supporting the roof are like furniture.  It has been such a wonderful thing that I enjoyed being part of’.

Clad in kiln dried oak the owners sand the wood down and varnish it every six months (above)

The reading room roof comprises ‘two huge trusses made of wood that just lean against each other,’ says Marshall. ‘Then you simply infill the gaps to get the grid.’ The challenge was making 600 glulam solid oak beams veneered with oak.  It is unusual as there are no visible nuts and bolts.

James Fitzpatrick, fitzpatrick + partners (Sydney), Eileen Newbury, Leading Edge Events and Peter Maddison, Architect and Host of Australian Grand Designs (below)

Vertical louvers previously installed to protect cattle from high winds now provide effective shading to those in the Reading Room. (below)

Savill Gardens Garden Centre (below) has a gridshell roof structure which took 12 months to build.  The longest length of wood in the world – 95 metres of larch – follows the edge of the building.

The Crown required that timber from the park be used where possible.   ‘There is no timber better than mine’ claimed the Royal Forester (apparently).

Following the fire at Windsor Castle (below) architect Giles Downes redesigned four major state rooms.  Although traditional in style, the new designs represent a radical reinterpretation of gothic architecture inspired by sinuous plant forms.

(Above) Andrew Waugh, of Waugh Thistleton Architects with Darren Stock of Australand Property Group discuss the benefits of wood buildings in Waugh’s latest project on Whitmore Road.

Whitmore Road, Hackey (below) consists of 6 storeys of CLT and is due to complete within the month.  Situated next to the canal, the building actually overhangs the water by two metres.  It has a hardwood chestnut cladding and big windows characteristic of CLT.  The building will be mixed residential and business and possibly home to Andrew Waugh himself.

Murray Grove (below) is the world’s tallest wood structure.  Built from CLT the 9-storey building was constructed from only 265 trees.  Waugh persuaded the client to build from wood. Why? Because he genuinely believes that buildings like this store large amounts of carbon and can help us tackle climate change.  The build efficiency is unlike any other.  The timber structure itself was constructed over a nine week period by four men, each working a three day week.  It was occupied ahead of schedule in January 2009.

Every apartment in the building sold out within 75 minutes of going on sale.  Surveys show tenant satisfaction to be very high in an area of deprived London.

Old timber clad truck ready for action (above)

Hackney in NE London has the biggest collection of timber buildings in the UK thanks to the local government’s ‘Timber First’ policy.  It is famous for Waugh Thistleton’s Stadhaus on Murray Grove – 9 storeys of cross laminated timber and others include Mossbourne Academy, architect Marcus Lee’s house and a new CLT development on Whitmore Road.

Mossbourne Academy (below) replaces the former Hackney Downs School and accommodates 1,000 pupils aged 11-16, with a special focus on teaching information and communication technology.  Previously the failing school was one of the worst in the country.  Built 7 years ago, the largest post and beam glulam structure in the UK is now one of the most successful schools.

The design brief called for open space allowing the Principal to see into the classrooms.  The wood structure and large windows allowed for this.  After 7 winters the building is still in good condition proving the durability of timber.

Heathrow Terminal 5 Architect Marcus Lee designed his own two-storey eco-family home in a deprived area of Hackney.  However, his house truly shows off the beauty of open post and beam frame.  With five girls to look after, he wanted to build quickly.  That’s why he chose wood. The build was astonishingly fast. Work began in March 2005, when drainage was dug and foundations installed. It was completed by May.

When asked why he chose wood he said, ‘You can cut wood and shape it.  It is warm.  To me, it feels like a holiday home.  It is an excellent insulator.  We always feel warm and cosy in here. I’d like to build another home from cross laminated timber’

When asked what his biggest challenge was he responded, ‘pleasing the client – my wife!  No seriously, getting the structure right to budget.  And the open plan approach means that the services (electrical, gas) are on display which sometimes isn’t so attractive.’

The layout is influenced by Japanese design, with storage arranged along the sidewalls hiding everything from the washing machine to – on the first floor – a narrow shower room.

Marcus and Rachel’s Highbury home has been built from Siberian larch. The house also uses red cedar for frames and cladding, and Douglas Fir for the balconies, all of which add subtle variations of tone.  The house has no load-bearing walls so it provides a flexible space. If you like you could move rooms around. You could even unbolt this house and put it somewhere else.

Quirky fact for the day – larch is the only deciduous conifer.

The Darwin Study Centre, home of Charles Darwin himself, was designed to maximise the view of the river whilst reducing traffic noise from the road.  Hence it faces the opposite direction to that which you might think.  The green oak structural beams are starting to crack but just add character to the beautifully planned room.  Kiln dried oak furniture sit perfectly in this area.

Cambridge Institute for Education (below) opened in 2005 constructed with Glulam support beams.

The library (below) consists of common joists and twined primaries which gives  beautiful effect to a layman like me.

Cambridge Swimming pool (below)

And just to prove that buildings don’t have to be made from wood to be beautiful – whoops I shouldn’t say that! 

Corpus Christi College (below)

King’s College Chapel (below)

The window cutting (above) is simply cut out of the CLT with no need for support joists as the wood is strong enough in itself.

In contrast Greensted church (below) has been storing carbon for over a millenium.  It dates back to AD1000 and is possibly the oldest standing wood building in the world.  It uses a vertical stave construction.  The church bears witness to the work of Saxon, Norman, Tudor and Victorian builders who variously extended, repaired and restored the building over the ages. In 1848/9 the church underwent severe restoration works, and in 1990 works were undertaken to stabilise the church as it stands today, whilst in 2005 the spire was completely re-shingled in Oak.

The Globe Theatre (below) is the first timber frame building in London since the Great Fire of 1666.  The reconstructed Globe, which opened in 1997, stands only 200 yards from the original site. Techniques used in the reconstruction of the theatre were painstakingly accurate. The building is a ‘authentic’ 16^th century timber-framed building – no structural steel was used.  ‘Green’ oak was cut and fashioned according to 16th-century practice and assembled in two-dimensional bays on the Bankside site.

Southbank University (below) is an excellent example of plywood or laminated veneer lumbar.  The glazed curtain wall is 33.4m high and 30.1m wide.

The stairs at Southbank University are profiled laminated plywood.  The detail can be clearly seen in the photo below.

Kingsdale School, Dulwich (below) – the sports hall was the first building in the UK to have been built from cross laminated timber.  Children have found the ‘aesthetics stunning’, to provide a ‘calming feel’, ‘uplifting’.  The architect was asked to transform the culture of the school and rebuiling in CLT was one initiative.  The aim was to prove that it would work better than with concrete or steel.  Since the development works in 2005 the school has seen an improvement in learning.

(Sports hall, Kingsdale school, Dulwich.  Image couteousy)

(Houses of Parliament, London)

Portcullis House (above) has one of the most complex timber roof structures in Europe.  It houses accommodation for 210 Members of Parliament and was completed in 2000.  Originally the atrium roof was conceived as a steel structure but the architects chose a traditional material to reflect the character of the nearby Palace of Westminster.

In Westminster Hall (above) oak is used extensively in the hammer beam roof.  Built in 1399 it has been storing carbon since before the industrial revolution.  The wood supports were prefabricated in Ham, Surrey and brought up the river by barge.

Architect Hugh Strange’s house (below) in Deptford contrasts markedly to Westminster Hall.  The solid timber panels were fabricated in a Swiss factory and driven to London before being erected on site in only two days. The windows, doors and internal fit-out are of FSC tropical hardwood from Nicaragua, felled by a hurricane, and arrived on site in a container.  Hugh Strange describes his home as ‘part of the architecture is making something quite cheap look very grand.’

I’ve been managing ‘Make It Wood’ since its launch in October last year and I’m really looking forward to discovering different ways of building with responsibly sourced wood.

The tour will be an exciting chance to learn more about how we can build with wood and in turn store vast amounts of carbon, keeping it out of the atmosphere.  I look forward to hearing from the architects and builders themselves who have used innovative wood construction techniques to build.  Hopefully we’ll see more of these wood builds in Australia soon.

I’ll be recording my trip through this blog by providing case studies, photos and interviews of key architects and homebuilders about why they have chosen to use wood in their construction.

Highlights of this blog will include the 9-storey cross laminate timber building – Murray Grove; Architect Marcus Lee’s own ‘wood-framed’ house; the oldest wooden church in the world – Greensted Church in Essex (circa 9^th century); the Globe Theatre; Giles Downes’ reconstruction of Windsor castle; and King’s College Chapel in Cambridge.

(Murray Grove, Hackney, NE London, England)

(Woodland Trust Headquarters, Grantham, England)

Chris Philpot, Campaign Manager, Make It Wood, Planet Ark