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Three Self Build Timber Constructions

Research project consisting of three timber constructions built with postgraduate students. ‘Finnforest Pavilion’ constructed of Kerto S (laminated veneered lumber) and plywood for ‘Ecobuild 2008’; which was re-made and modified to become the second, ‘A Timber Room’ – a visually and thermally warm space inside an agricultural shed on the Hadspen Estate in Somerset; the third, the ‘Hadspen Belvedere’, was green oak and steel, also on the Hadspen Estate. Colin Wharry was co-author of the initial designs for the ‘Finnforest Pavilion' and the 'Timber Room’. Jim Blackburn collaborated on the oak-detailing for the ‘Hadspen Belvedere’.

The methodology employed collaborative design sessions with post-graduate students and structural engineers and specialist timber engineers and rapid self-build processes that test the formal possibilities and limits of working with a prescribed material (i.e. a material offered as sponsorship or because it is locally sourced) that is both renewable and a carbon store.

The contribution to knowledge is 3-fold:

- innovative understanding of construction metabolism: all aspects of making oriented about material logic of wood construction in subtle dialogue between technology and craft and between market and scavenging

- architettura povera: rigorous adherence to material constraints achieves deep poetic richness from austerity and untrained workforce ['sustainability']

- innovative understanding of teaching/research studio [self-build] as institution that intervenes in late capitalism through ethos of architettura povera

The Finnforest Pavilion was reviewed in the ‘Architects Journal' and ‘Ecotech’ in February 2008. A Timber Room was reviewed in ‘Ecotech’ in February 2009 and was highly commended in the AJ Small Projects Awards in 2009. The Hadspen Belvedere was reviewed in the ‘Architects Journal’ in January 2011, in the book “A World of Gardens” by John Dixon Hunt, Reaktion Books, in May 2012 and on the internet: http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/aj-small-projects/hadspen-belvedere-hadspen-estate-somerset-by-david-grandorge-with-diploma-unit-7-asd-london-metropolitan-university/8609853.article. The projects are also published in detail on the website: unit7research.com.