Over the past 10-15 years a renaissance in wood architecture has occurred with the development of new wood building systems and design strategies, elevating wood from a predominantly single-family residential idiom to a rival of concrete and steel construction for a variety of building types, including high rises. This new solid wood architecture offers unparalleled environmental as well as construction and aesthetic benefits, and is of growing importance for professionals and academics involved in green design. Solid Wood provides the first detailed book which allows readers to understand new mass timber/massive wood architecture. It provides: historical context in wood architecture from around the world a strong environmental rationale for the use of wood in buildings recent developments in contemporary fire safety and structural issues insights into building code challenges detailed case studies of new large-scale wood building systems on a country-by-country basis. Case studies from the UK, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Italy, Canada, the United States, New Zealand and Australia highlight design strategies, construction details and unique cultural attitudes in wood design. The case studies include the most ambitious academic, hospitality, industrial, multi-family, and wood office buildings in the world. With discussions from leading architectural, engineering, and material manufacturing firms in Europe, North America and the South Pacific, Solid Wood disrupts preconceived notions and serves as an indispensable guide to twenty-first century wood architecture and its environmental and cultural benefits.
Wood has always been a strong contributing factor in the creation of interesting architecture. Because of its special physical characteristics, its many possibilities of application and combination with other construction materials, since human beings began building houses, wood has been one of the main building materials. In addition, because of the increasing sensitivity for the protection of resources, the ecological potential of wood as a renewable raw material wood has gained in significance. To build with wood has been for years and is still a trend topic, this volume is a road tour of contemporary wood architecture. The many possibilities for use of this natural building material are shown with texts, photos, facts and drawings, as well as the innovative construction techniques which have extended these possibilities. The architectural species diversity ranges from energy efficient passive homes to wide span supporting structures, to multi-story productions halls.
In light of environmental challenges architecture is facing, wood is no longer regarded as outmoded, nostalgic, and rooted in the past, but increasingly recognized as one of the most promising building materials for the future. Recent years have seen unprecedented innovation of new technologies for advancing wood architecture. Advancing Wood Architecture offers a comprehensive overview of the new architectural possibilities that are enabled by cutting-edge computational technologies in wood construction. It provides both an overarching architectural understanding and in-depth technological information through built projects and the works of four leading design research groups in Europe. The projects presented include large scale, permanent buildings such as the ETH Arch-Tec Lab Building in Zurich, the Landesgartenschau Exhibition Hall near Stuttgart and the Boiler House in Hooke Park, UK, as well as, built research prototypes investigating additive robotic fabrication, folded plate structures and meteorosensitive building skins. Illustrated in full colour, the book showcases the latest technological developments in design computation, simulation and digital fabrication together with an architectural, engineering and manufacturing perspective, offering an outlook towards novel spatial and constructional opportunities of a material with unrivalled ecological virtues.
Timber: the old raw material and building material returns.There are many reasons today for building with wood and there are great advantages over conventional designs. Wood is not only a renewable building material that helps reduce the levels of CO2 and is hence good for climate change, but, due to modern computing and manufacturing processes, it can also be used for a variety of construction tasks. Wood possesses excellent qualities for both construction and indoor climate control, and can easily be combined with other common building materials. Based on 24 international projects, the book provides an overview of the range of possibilities in wood construction today. Texts, images, and plans document the architectural and constructive qualities of contemporary timber structures from the conceptual design to the structure in detail. The various uses are based on current research in modern timber engineering but also on timber construction expertise that has been developing over many centuries. This special discipline has evolved significantly in recent decades, particularly in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and is a world leader today.
Wood is a fresh, insightful and surprising look at the world's best timber architecture. With 170 structures from the last 1,000 years, Wood features projects from some of the world's most celebrated architects. Renzo Piano's otherworldly New Caledonian Cultural Centre is found alongside projects from Tadao Ando and Peter Zumthor. Even the work of Le Corbusier, an architect best known for his work in concrete, is shown - his humble Mediterranean log cabin, Le Cabanon, was his last home. Arranged to promote comparison and discussion, the selected projects take the reader on a global tour of inspiring and intriguing structures: a Vietnamese village hall sits beside a state-of-the-art Belgian laboratory, an Italian anatomical theatre alongside a luxurious Canadian sauna and an onion-domed Russian church next to a fortified Japanese castle. Illustrated with extraordinary photographs, each project includes an extended caption providing an insightful commentary on the building. An essay by the bestselling author and naturalist Richard Mabey explores the close relationship between trees and architecture. Following the popularity of Concrete and Brick, Wood is a beautiful and informative visual exploration of a natural material that harbours an extraordinary range of expression and potential and has inspired architects for generations.
As synthetic materials and mutant and hybrid concoctions attain prominence in our daily lives—in our handheld devices, cooking utensils, vehicles, even things as simple as our shopping bags—the design and construction industries have instead re-embraced the familiar, the conventional—wood, which has regained prominence through innovations in engineering and construction methodologies. Technology is now commonly used—and often (though not always) affordably used—to cut, perforate, assemble, erect, and even fabricate materials in a manner not previously possible. Wood is one such material, and Timber in the City documents both the imaginings of those in the nascence of their education and practice and the executed work of design professionals at the leading edge of architecture. These designers, regardless of the duration of their immersion in the field, have imaginatively rethought the means by which we build and the methods by which we define space merely through differing deployments of a familiar building material.