Timber Seasoning Shelter

The Timber Seasoning Shelter is a canopy which provides rain-shelter for the stacked air-drying of Hooke Park sourced timber for use in future student-designed buildings at the site. The canopy is constructed from a reciprocal grid of steam-bent lamellas fabricated from Hooke Park’s beech trees (fagus sylvatica). The annual thinning of European Beech trees planted in the 1950s creates large volumes of timber with value only as firewood, despite being one of the strongest and hardest species grown in England. Identifying a long tradition of its use in steam bent furniture, the students began to research innovative methods for using Beech in an architectural construction.

An adjustable pneumatic steam bending jig allowed each 2m-long plank to be bent to a unique curvature according to its place within the structure. The hexagonal reciprocal pattern meant that a continuous structure could be built out of relatively short pieces of timber – the maximum length of reasonable quality that could be viably extracted from the trees felled.

Large patches of the roof were pre-assembled and then craned into position. The construction work was carried out by the Design & Make students themselves with the help of participants of the AA’s SummerBuild programme. The PVC-polyester membrane is tensioned by ‘push-ups’ formed by extensions of the bolts that connect the beech lamella elements and by tension lines connected to a perimeter beam of doubly-curved glue-laminated elements.

Project Credits

Students: Meghan Dorrian, Kawit Ko-Udomvit, Omri Menashe, Glen Stellmacher

Tutors: Charley Brentnall, Stewart Dodd, Martin Self

Arup: Francis Archer, Glen Rust, Toby Clark

Membrane supply: Architen Landrell (Lance Rowell, Ceri Richards)

Timber Testing: Bath University (Nick Gathercole)