BUILD - Architecture Awards 2017

2017 Architecture Awards Build the planet’s raw materials. In this context, wood, as the primary renewable building material available to us, has huge potential to play a leading role in the construction industry’s engagement in the growing drive to implement circular economy principles across all industrial sectors. Continuing process and technological change is necessary throughout the construction industry, however, to meet ever increasing demands for new, energy-efficient and healthy buildings. At present, the huge need for new and affordable housing in response to demographic change (the gravitation of populations from countryside to cities, people living longer, revisions to conventional definitions of what constitutes ‘the nuclear family’, etc.) is a universal phenomenon, but one that is unmatched by the global construction and property sectors’ current abilities to deliver at the scale required. New housing models and systems are therefore needed that can be built at speed to far higher standards and to better quality than even before and which provide well-designed, healthy and safe environments in which people can live and work. The same is true of the associated buildings these new communities require: education and healthcare facilities, as well as cultural, leisure, retail and other amenities. The modern workplace too, continues to evolve in the slipstream of ongoing, rapid advances in digital technologies, with increased levels of attention being given to spatial and environmental design approaches that enhance employee satisfaction and wellbeing. Much of the change required in these areas can be, and is being achieved through the use of modern timber technologies: witness the progress over the past 10 years in the design of ever-taller residential buildings formed from solid, laminated timber products and systems, with housing projects entirely constructed from these rising from a pioneering nine storeys in 2008 to proposals today in many cities around the world for timber-based apartment complexes which can be upwards of 30 storeys high. Traditional concerns over the fire safety of timber buildings are rapidly being addressed - and confounded - by sophisticated fire engineering research, as are structural design questions about the durability and stability of these lighter-weight constructions. Commercial clients too, are recognising the health and welfare benefits of workplaces built from timber products. The greenhouse gas implications inherent in rainforest depletion have focused attention on the illegal harvesting of tropical hardwoods and the consequent need to find replacements for the timber products derived from them. The term ‘wood modification’ may be unfamiliar to many, but the bio-based processes involved in the chemical and thermal transformation of less durable species to the kind of highly durable timber products now being used, for example, to line canals and which, being non-toxic can, at the end of their service life, be re-used for other purposes. The change in the way we think about, and use timber-based products and systems is the result of intensive research and development carried out over the past 30 years by specialist research centres, university departments and manufacturing companies in different parts of the world, either individually or in collaboration: work that continues today to advance the benefits and possibilities of timber design and construction. The consequent need to disseminate the outputs of this R&D work more widely to the design and construction sectors as well as providing sound technical grounding to them in the use of emergent engineered and modified timber products and systems is the raison d’être of TDI. The company has thus focused the delivery of its goals around three major areas of activity. The creation of a pan-European Continuing Professional Education programme for architects and engineers is the next major element in TDI’s business plan. Now at an advanced stage of development, the extension of its experience in this area to a wider, European-based audience will deliver a genuinely life-long-learning framework in which participants can, at their own pace, expand and update their knowledge of timber design and construction throughout their careers. The objectives are achievable, with the aim to improve individual career advancement possibilities for participants by providing them with demonstrable knowledge and skills in the use of timber in design and construction. TDI also plans to upgrade the knowledge base within professional offices, thus providing employers with additional, specialist skills and services to market to clients as well as increasing job mobility opportunities throughout the EU. Current projections indicate that 80% of the world’s population of eight billion will live in urban situations by 2050. This, together with international concerns over rapidly accelerating climate change and the destructive scale and nature of conventional extraction and conversion processes used to transform raw materials into building components demands a paradigm shift in the way we conceive and construct buildings and cities. In responding to these environmental challenges, developments in timber engineering and in engineered timber products have, over the past decade, helped to foster a new generation of tall, solid wood residential structures. It is now possible to explore how the knowledge gained from these individual projects might be extended into the design of clusters of vertical timber buildings that, together, can successfully deliver large-scale, high-density, urban communities. In communication with architects and engineers around the globe, the Vertical Timber City project is the company’s research and development vehicle addressing these issues. Finally, tourism is now one of the world’s largest industries, with a rate of growth fast outpacing the abilities of countries and regions to provide the updates to infrastructure necessary to support the vast numbers of arriving visitors looking for new and different travel experiences. Following its successful involvement in ‘The Scottish Scenic Routes’ initiative that has employed young architects and landscape architects to design new facilities along the major road routes throughout the country, TDI is now focused on how these pilot projects can be extended to provide new facilities along walking, cycling, sailing and rail routes in remoter parts of the country, with the interconnected aims of improving the country’s physical infrastructure for tourism; delivering sustainable rural employment; providing architecture and construction experience to the country’s wealth of young design talent; and using the projects to demonstrate and test the new timber-based construction products and systems evolved under TDI’s innovation programme. The company has, as part of its commitment to international knowledge transfer, shared its considerable experience in this area via several European collaborations.