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Tim is Carpenter Oak & Woodland’s managing director. Tim has extensive experience of managing companies of all sizes, in many business sectors, including construction and building. Tim’s no-nonsense hands-on approach, coupled with his outstanding management experience and commercial acumen, make him the ideal complement to the craft-based skills of the rest of the team.
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Better late than never, I suppose, but being so busy I never quite got round to commenting on the CPD event organised by the Centre for Timber Engineering at Napier University. The theme was on the use of green timber in construction, a subject obviously close to my heart! I always find these events a mixed blessing - while it's great to get updated and to hear from and meet some great people, invariably I end up coming away with a big 'if only....'. In this case, I found myself lamenting the fact that we are great at producing forests of sitka spruce, but very little that we can easily use unprocessed in construction.
Anyway, it was great to see that so many of our projects were being featured and discussed, and that so many architects and engineers so obviously have faith in us not just to manufacture on time and on budget, but perhaps more gratifyingly that the message to get your specialist contractor involved in the design early on was so strongly expressed. I think in a time where so many are wanting to build in timber, but gravitate to the engineered forms (LVLs, glulams etc), the use of unprocessed green timber is so often much more appropriate - a more simple, ecologically sound, attractive, and yes cheaper option.
It's no doubt that the number of enquiries we receive are markedly on the increase. Who knows - a few more buildings of the quality of the Loch Lomond HQ and the Aspire centre in Dumferline, and we could see a huge swing towards this most obvious of building methods.
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I've been taking the time over the Easter holiday to do a bit of reading, and this time round it was about the Arts and Crafts movement. I love the whole ethos about this period - the teachings of John Ruskin and the architecture of Lethaby, Voysey, Webb and my particular favourite, Lutyens. (By the way, I never have understood why William Morris has become synonymous with Arts and Crafts, when probably best known for the output of Morris & Co - products mass manufactured in a factory, and anything but simple designs, but hey, what do I know?). The Arts and Crafts view that a building should be good, simple and honest, celebrating and being in harmony with nature, and built by skilled local craftspeople, is I guess why people are today attracted to building with heavy timber framed buildings. Many of their messages of environmental concern, open plan living, and celebrating the skills of our craftsmen are as true today as they were 100 years ago.
Does this, I wonder mean that this resurgence in oak framed building is heralding in a 21st Century Arts and Crafts renaissance? Well I hope not. In some quarters, oak framed buildings are seen as only very traditional - all close studded, and desperate to be painted black! - and we have been banging on for quite some time about how post and beam frames are infinitely flexible, not just as structures, but as the facilitators of every conceivable style of dwelling. It would be a shame to pigeon-hole our frames into just one style.
So, like the Arts and Crafts movement, let's not get into a design rut and insist on a certain style, but get imaginative, and celebrate the skill and craftsmanship that goes into our bespoke frames.
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I've just been to the EcoBuild event at Earls Court London, where I was keen to hear of the latest thinking on Zero Carbon. A couple of things struck me.
The first, and I guess to me, the most obvious impression is that while new technologies, and new knowledge have come to the fore, it hasn't really made the route to eco building any clearer. I attended seminars where the speakers seemed to be ignoring some pretty major issues - eg concrete is good because it has high thermal mass (isn't this like saying that chocolate is a good food stuff because it's easy to carry round?!), and some speakers even seemed to be confused and contradicting themselves. What they all had in common was that they stated that this was a complex area. One speaker pointed out that while the sustainability debate had moved on from simply discussing low embodied energy to now including the importance of low energy in use as well, a whole raft of other factors such as social responsibility, damage to the wider environment, toxicity levels in the building etc had been ignored, when it's just not appropriate to do so.
My view, from attending this event, is that basically a number of vested interests have sought to make a case for their positive attributes while sweeping the negatives under the carpet (the case for concrete is a prime example). This means that if we take all we're told on face value, everything has eco credentials. From a small self builder to a specifier for a major project, at present, it's still all really unhelpful.
So here's my take. If we wanted to be ultimately environmentally responsible, we simply wouldn't build anything else, so perhaps we should just stop trying to fool ourselves and get more pragmatic here by using some simple rules:
The above probably won't get you 'Zero Carbon' or Code 6, but will give you a healthy home that could with justifiably be called an environmentally responsible home. And that's far more useful than having everyone so confused by the conflicting messages that we all decide that it's too complicated and then end up doing nothing.
I'm not an expert, but as you'll probably know, it doesn't stop me giving my opinion!
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I'm delighted that the Gridshell roof over the Orangery at Chiddingstone Castle was awarded 'Best Use of British Timber' at the recent wood awards. For me, it is a lovely little project that perhaps would also have been worthy of an Innovation Award.
The roof is unique in that, while we have made a number of gridshells now, this is the first time that one was to be used to support a frameless glass roof, and therefore the interfacing of green timber which would move, and the glazing which could not, was critical. For us, there was a further complication, which was that the sophisticated computer modelling that we employed could only predict that the finger jointed chestnut lath would bend uniformly - unrealistic, but critical at these fine tolerances. The original design we inherited had impossibly tight radii, and we had to devise a way of getting the lath to bend where it would normally have snapped. Normally when a gridshell is produced, it is accepted as inevitavble that the shell will 'find its own form'. In this case, the glazing meant that was not good enough. Let's just say that it's lucky that we believe in R&D!
It was a great concept by the Architect Peter Hulbert, and the Trustees of the the castle were very brave to have commissioned this innovative project. I wonder if they would still have gone ahead knowing the challenges that this presented. The fact is that they did, and I'm pleased for them that this project has been recognised with this award.
Without people with this kind of vision, our architectural landscape would be all the poorer.
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Just a quick note to say that we'll be at the Interbuild show at Birmingham NEC from 28th October. ( www.interbuild.com ). It will be great to see you if you can make it, but if you do want to spend any time with one of us, can you let us know in advance and we'll make sure we keep some time free for you.
Look forward to seeing you there.
More blogs by Tim Burrell
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