© zs-studio

• Architects: Atelier REP
• Location: Chengdu, Sichuan, China
• Team Member: Baoxin Yang
• Project Year: 2015
• Photographs: zs-studio, Baoxin Yang

• Structural Consultant: Keliang Han

© zs-studio

The “Bamboo garden” is located in a typical countryside nearby the city. It is a “rejuvenation” project which implants new functions of family activity area in a dairy farm of a local dairy company. Families can experience the production process of healthy milk and get close to nature. 

© zs-studio

© zs-studio

The purposes and strategies of this design are: architecture — land — people, natural material, hand-making construction, and simple values. 

Plan

Diagram

The “Bamboo garden” is not for planting bamboo, but is considered to be an area to experiment with different types of bamboo structure. Since ancient times, bamboo has been using for artifacts, also it has been endowing with humanity feelings. The advantages of bamboo are growing fast, hardness and easy to process. That’s why we choose “bamboo” as the most important natural material. We try to find some new methods to explore contemporary hand-making construction based on traditional methods of bamboo techniques. Also we hope to develop bamboo structure as an important architectural type in country life, agriculture and landscape architecture to meet people’s requirements of back into nature. 

© zs-studio

Parent-child activity area is outside and near to the farmers’ living area. The site stretches from south to north in a long strip shape with a length of 133 meters and a width of 18-32 meters. The existing buildings are some bungalows with brick concrete structure. For space design, we adopted two strategies “retain, renovate ” and ”add, implant” to maintain normal working and living here while we rejuvenated this area by implanting parent-child activities. 

© zs-studio

© zs-studio

In the way of “retain, renovate”: We retained the staff dormitory and guardhouse but turned four rooms of staff dormitory into sales room, dining room and restroom for visitors; Also we renovated the external space of guardhouse considering with these trees around. 

© Baoxin Yang

In the way of “add, implant”: From south to north , the “bamboo garden” is planned to be four areas: entrance area, science education area, interactive experiences area and entertainment area. Meanwhile we added several architectures and implanted relevant cultural elements into the four areas. Corresponding with the architectures in each area are: a fan-shaped entrance; an umbrella-shaped bamboo structure, a music square and the wave-sharped bamboo wall; the verandas and bamboo walls; a grass storage. 

© Baoxin Yang

© Baoxin Yang

In this design, all architectures are made of bamboo system structure and main materials are all from the nature. Through experimenting joints in different materials with different ways, finally, each architecture has taken on its richness and differences. 

Diagram

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© Nico Saieh

• Architects: Cristian Hrdalo
• Location: Cachagua, Zapallar, Región de Valparaíso, Chile
• Architect In Charge: Cristian Hrdalo
• Area: 350.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2010
• Photographs: Nico Saieh, Courtesy of Cristian Hrdalo

© Nico Saieh

From the architect. HG House is a house on the beach for my parents, for them it was very important that the house could receive all the family and guests and also to function at a reduced size when they were alone.

Plan 1

“When an architect design for a relative, there is some experimental freedom, but then the next commission you must validate your work through the client.”

© Nico Saieh

Section

Under these conditions the house was conceived as the interaction between three volumetric elements: the guest’s area, service area and the master bedroom, then the gaps between these opaque and private elements accommodate the public areas such as the living room, dining room which generate the connection to the outside. The volume that hosts the guests can be closed off when the owners are alone.

© Nico Saieh

Plan 2

Courtesy of Cristian Hrdalo

The plot has great ocean view but in the front it was exposed in a corner to both streets, which is why the house protects its own privacy from outside burrowing, without losing transparency, hiding the main access, parking lots, without losing the connection with the garden, the sun and sea views.

© Nico Saieh

Elevation

The house is completely built in concrete with a handcraft raw table cast. Because of a condominium regulations the volume of the second floor has to be painted in white, which with the years and the humidity turn to green, so we paint it with a diluted paint so texture of the concrete allows the dirt more than a flawless white.

© Nico Saieh

© Nico Saieh

Section

Diagram

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Courtesy of Pezo von Ellrichshausen

Pezo von Ellrichshausen’s Vara Pavilion for the 2016 Venice Biennale is described by the architects as “a series of exteriors within other exteriors.” Breaking down this crypticness, what emerges is a maze-like complex of concentric circles – ten of them – formed with steel, cement, and painted plaster, which collectively create a series of walls, but no roof, thus forming a pavilion that is open to the elements from above. The 324 square meter pavilion’s title, “vara,” refers to an imprecise and obsolete Spanish unit of measurement, that was employed during the country’s conquering of America to trace and measure cities. Each of circles of the Vara Pavilion is a diameter of the unit, ranging from two to eleven.

Ground Floor

According to the architects, “the resulting sequence of spaces can be understood both as a traditional open plan – with several accesses [but] without any shape, hierarchy or predominant direction – and also as a limited arrangement of singular segments.” The interior spaces vary from “narrow and acute concavities” to “wide but irregular convex room” and “from overexposed cores to dark corners.” The overall intention of the architects being “to produce a rather normal and familiar building; a unique place with the unintelligible capacity to become something more than what it seems to be.”

Courtesy of Pezo von Ellrichshausen

The Vara Pavilion is part of the 2016 Venice Biennale and is on view in the Giardini di Castello until November 27.

Courtesy of Pezo von Ellrichshausen

Courtesy of Pezo von Ellrichshausen

Courtesy of Pezo von Ellrichshausen

Client: XV Venice Architecture Biennale (Curator: Alejandro Aravena)
Architects: Pezo von Ellrichshausen (Mauricio Pezo & Sofia von Ellrichshausen)
Collaborators: Susan Conger-Austin, Diego Perez, Anton Zu Knyphausen, Iven Peh, Daniel Andersson, Teresa Correia, Sarah Biffa, Thomas Patrix
Production: Solo Galerie, Paris (Christian Bourdais & Eva Albarran)
Support: Knauf Build Beyond, Fundacion Chile Profundo, Fundacion Cosmos and Chilean Government (Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes)
Construction: Impresa Edile Fabris Danilo, Padova

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© Haruo Mikami

• Architects: Sérgio Parada
• Location: Lago Sul, Brasília – DF, Brazil
• Design Team: Sérgio Roberto Parada Arquitetos Associados; Sérgio Roberto Parada (autor), Rodrigo Biavati e Rodrigo Marar (co-autores), Rafael Moura (colaborador)
• Landscape: Quinta Arquitetura, Design e Paisagismo
• Area: 808.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2011
• Photographs: Haruo Mikami, C.B. Aragão

• Structure: Eng. Lenildo dos Santos

© Haruo Mikami

This Project was designed for a young family with two small children in Lago Sul Qi 25, in Brasília, Brazil. To meet the established program, the residence is 808 m², divided into three levels on the ground, adapting to the topography of the site.

The project enhances the access to the residence, creating a garden space of receiving people. Thus respects the public space and establishes a spatial continuity between what is public and private.

© Haruo Mikami

The composition of residence values the volumes defined by its uses, which are intimate, service, social and leisure. All these functions are directly connected with the social area, featured in this design as “cuore” the residence.

Plan

Section

The interior and exterior spatial integration, and recovery of sight to the city of Brasilia is data that the project strictly obeyed in its design.

© Haruo Mikami

All the main structure of the building is reinforced concrete, its lining rustic plaster gives the desired texture, and social area with double height, is protected from sunlight through a large panel of perforated steel, filtering the sunlight and night, with artificial lighting, enhancing the built volumes.

© Haruo Mikami

The three levels of the building are composed of underground services, the social, leisure and guests on the ground floor and intimate on the mezzanine.

© C.B. Aragão

Diagram

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“Immersed in reading a book it feels like [being] inside an architecture, a metaphysical space surrounded by the words,” says Federico Babina, discussing his latest series of illustrations, ARCHIWRITER. In the new series of 27 drawings, the illustrator has created “portraits” of authors by personifying their writing styles, periods, and locations as built environments made from architectural elements and words. Heightening this sense of individuality, Babina states that the resultant portraits can be “fluctuating, vernacular, itinerant, ephemeral, concentric, labyrinthine, surrealist, oneiric, and futuristic.”

© Federico Babina

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration. – Ernest Hemingway

Fiódor Dostoyevski, the philosophical polyphone

© Federico Babina

Italo Calvino, the exactitude of imagination

© Federico Babina

Franz Kafka, the labyrinth of metaphors

© Federico Babina

George Orwell, the effective minimalism

© Federico Babina

Jack Kerouac, the improvisation journey

© Federico Babina

Charles Bukowski, the urban poetry

© Federico Babina

Haruki Murakami, the noisy loneliness

© Federico Babina

Hermann Hesse, the hagiography mysticism

© Federico Babina

Albert Camus, the sense of isolation

© Federico Babina

Milan Kundera, the lightness of absence

© Federico Babina

Federico García Lorca, the power of metaphor

© Federico Babina

León Tolstói, the ascetic morality

© Federico Babina

Paul Auster, the layers of identity

© Federico Babina

Ernest Hemingway, the absence of lyrical

© Federico Babina

Oscar Wilde, the tears of hedonism

© Federico Babina

William Shakespeare, the medieval metaphor

© Federico Babina

Raymond Carver, the ordinary details

© Federico Babina

William Burroughs, the paranoid order

© Federico Babina

Dante Alighieri, the lyric travel

© Federico Babina

John Fante, the beauty of bitterness

© Federico Babina

Truman Capote, the fashionable nightmare

© Federico Babina

Richard Wright, the cage of race

© Federico Babina

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the timeless isolation

© Federico Babina

Henry Miller, the sensuality of reality

© Federico Babina

Isaac Asimov, the hidden universe

© Federico Babina

Marcel Proust, the structure of memory

© Federico Babina

James Joyce, the stream of consciousness

© Federico Babina

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© Ulysse Lemerise Bouchard

• Architects: MU Architecture
• Location: Mansonville, QC J0E, Canada
• Project Team: Jean-Sébastien Herr, Charles Côté, Valérie Beaudin, Pierre-Paul Guillemette
• Area: 3000.0 ft2
• Project Year: 2015
• Photographs: Ulysse Lemerise Bouchard

• Structure: Latéral
• Contractor: Constructions Boivin

Plan

Plan

From the architect. Located in a quiet area of the Eastern Townships in Quebec, the Nook Residence sits in continuity with the landscape in which it is part. Turning its back to the street, it offers a virtually blind facade that encourages discovery and piques curiosity. Strategically located openings and a large gap in the white mass give a hint at the beautiful scenery below as we approach the building.

© Ulysse Lemerise Bouchard

Inside, the clear sequence of open living spaces on the ground floor successively unveils different views of Lake Memphremagog to the visitor. Separating public from private spaces, a relaxation and contemplation area comes in as a pause in the architecture discovery course. Acting as lounge suspended over the void, this interior balcony between two levels accentuates our appreciation of the site in all its splender.

© Ulysse Lemerise Bouchard

The steep terrain quickly dictated the first project constraints. The house clings to the steep terrain and seems to be projecting toward the Lake. Like an origami, the two volumes are linked by a dynamic bending ribbon that merges the roofs together. The created projections act as solar shading and protect a huge terrace facing south.

© Ulysse Lemerise Bouchard

A white painted wood decay uniformly coats all sides and allows a more delicate integration of the building in its environment. Inside, the sobriety of the materials creates a canvas for a space that is both bright and warm. Polished concrete radiant floors, black ceramic tiles and walnut furniture punctuate the space with elegance. Cedar ceilings extend outside in continuity with the roof soffits outside, stretching sights to the Lake. Abundant windows erase the boundaries between inside and outside and a black staircase in the continuity with the upstairs railing leads to the bedrooms on lower level. Two large bedrooms, a bathroom and a dormitory with apparent board-formed concrete walls mainly compose the Ground level.

© Ulysse Lemerise Bouchard

Acting as a landmark through the lush summer, the house changes with the seasons and its whiteness blends into the winter landscape as a tribute to the great Quebec winters.
via v2com

© Ulysse Lemerise Bouchard

© Ulysse Lemerise Bouchard

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Sou Fujimoto and Laisné Roussel's proposal for a tall wooden building in Bordeaux. Image © SOU FUJIMOTO ARCHITECTS + LAISNÉ ROUSSEL + RENDERING BY TÀMAS FISHER AND MORPH

Nowadays the main building materials used in the construction industry are concrete, steel and timber. From the point of view of ecological sustainability, there are four important differences between these three materials: first, timber is the only material of the three that is renewable; second, timber needs only a small amount of energy to be extracted and recycled compared to steel and concrete (but the implementation of its potential is not as developed yet); third, timber does not produce waste by the end of its life since it can be reused many times in several products before decomposing or being used as fuel and; and fourth, timber traps huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere – a tree can contain a ton of CO2 [1] – and the carbon absorbed remains embedded as long as the wood is in use.

Considering the fact that 36 percent of total carbon emissions in Europe during the last decade came from the building industry,[2] as well as 39 percent of total carbon emissions in the United States,[3] the materiality of construction should be a priority for governments’ regulations in the future as measurements against global warming. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and the level of carbon emissions of the big economies across the globe are big issues that need to be solved with urgency in order to avoid larger, more frequent climate catastrophes in the future. The current regulation in several countries of the EU, which is incentivizing the use of renewable materials in buildings, is showing the direction the building industry in many other parts of the world should follow. And if these measures are adopted across the EU and beyond – if other countries start to follow this tendency as well – there will be significantly more wood in cities.

Michael Green Architecture was part of a team that proposed the world's tallest wooden buildings as part of the Réinventer Paris competition. Image © MGA

However, though the use of wood is one of the most effective mechanisms to decrease CO2 emissions in building construction, there are other considerations that should be made at different scales of the built environment. City density, for example, is directly related to carbon emissions. It is a fact that dense cities are significantly more sustainable than sprawling cities; therefore one path to more sustainable forms of living might be the planning and regulation of compact wooden cities.

But a dense city necessarily requires the construction of high-rise buildings, posing challenges to wood construction technologies, since wood has traditionally been used in small buildings where the structural demands are lower. Also, the durability of wood due to moisture decay and fire has been a problem for timber structures. Fortunately, new timber-based products are being developed which are structurally stronger and last for longer periods of time without any moisture and fire complications. These new products allow us to build high-rise buildings, turning timber into a feasible and convenient alternative to traditional high-rise building materials such as concrete and steel. Wood technology will undoubtedly keep developing along this path, making it possible to build skyscrapers in the future.

In order to raise awareness of tall wooden buildings, last year Michael Green Architecture reimagined the Empire State Building as a wooden structure. Image © Metsä Wood

Even though material innovation and new technologies have increased the durability of timber significantly, there are still people who argue that steel and concrete are much more durable and, therefore more sustainable. However, the difficulty of reusing these materials is an issue. Nowadays, cities are very dynamic and are constantly changing, and thus the average life span of a building is not as long as it used to be in the past; today buildings die young. A study of residential buildings in the United Kingdom claims that 46 percent of demolished structures were between 11 and 32 years old at the time of their demolition.[4] The same study shows that in Japan, the typical life span of office building is between 23 and 41 years.[5] The data is very similar in many other countries around the world. In the current circumstances, steel and concrete buildings are constantly producing waste – demolished buildings – which means that their durability properties are a disadvantage in light of the “early” demolition of a considerable amount of the built environment. On the other hand, wood is a material that can be easily reused or recycled, or even used as fuel at the end of its use for construction purposes. This energy can be used to heat other wooden buildings or to produce wood-based products. This way, timber can easily become a carbon-neutral material.

High-rise timber buildings will need the development of new structural systems if the industry is pursuing the construction of buildings higher than twelve stories – the highest wooden buildings erected up until today. New structural systems are starting to use a variety of different wood-based products, taking advantage of the qualities and properties of each product for the diverse functions that structural systems require. A skyscraper is a very complex structure and it cannot be built using timber exclusively, therefore in the future the structural systems will probably be mixed, but they should always use as much timber as possible and decrease the amount of steel and concrete.

Early construction of Acton Ostry Architects' Brock Commons Student Residence at the University of British Columbia. When complete in 2017, the 18-story building will be the world's tallest timber building. Image © Acton Ostry Architects Inc. & University of British Columbia

Nowadays the most widely used wood-based products available on the market are Glued Laminated Timber (Gluelam), Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT), Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL), Laminated Strand Lumber (LSL), and Parallel Strand Lumber (PSL). Gluelam is produced by gluing together individual planned timber laminations to form continuous timber members, creating a homogenous composite material without limitations of width and length. The individual pieces are joined with finger joints, so there are no potential weak points.[6] Because of this, it is possible to standardize the quality of timber and develop timber structures with engineering precision, therefore providing an ecological alternative to steel and concrete. CLT is a massive panel of several individual plies glued together at 90 degrees to each other. The deformation seen in solid wood due to variations in moisture conditions is practically nonexistent in CLT, and this stability can result in very precise tolerances for prefabrication construction applications,[7] making it possible to build with the same precision as steel and concrete. LVL is produced using thin layers of softwood veneer glued together and usually oriented in the same direction. It can be very strong in the longitudinal direction parallel to wood fibers, and as large dimensions for floors, roofs and walls or as a columns and beams.[8] LSL is similar to LVL but instead of layering thin veneers it is made from layering flakes of wood pressed together with adhesive. PSL is manufactured from strands or strips oriented in the same direction and combined with adhesive to form large format billets. It is used in applications where high bending and/or compression stress is needed, such as long spam beams.[9]

Michael Green Architecture's Wood Innovation Design Center was the first tall wood building in Canada. Image © Ema Peter

All of the wood-based products available in the market are frequently used for different parts of buildings, fulfilling particular functions according to the specific characteristics and properties of each product. But all of these products require huge amounts of timber, and the concerns of many people regarding deforestation in service of the construction industry are more than justified. The demand for wood in a scenario where timber is the main material of construction in cities could be catastrophic for forests and the environment – if the extraction is not well managed. The practice of logging and re-logging an area, each time taking the best of what has grown there with no provision for the future could be a disaster for the environment.[10] When the eventual regrowth of the forest is based on stunted and malformed trees, the new forest is of lower quality. This is currently a problem in many countries, but forest management in the EU is demonstrating that it is possible to produce more forest than what is being harvested. Therefore, better management is imperative in order to be able to maintain and even increase the area of our forests while still using them intensively for construction. Silvicultural and genetic improvements have been increasing productivity and will even more in the future. Today, an integrated modern operation can convert more than 80 percent of a tree into useful products, with most of the rest converted into fuel.[11] In order to increase productivity, reliance on smaller and younger trees is necessary. Logging trees when they are young essentially means producing smaller pieces in bigger numbers than larger ones. Considering the today’s advanced timber technology this should not be a problem since very stable and strong products can be made from small, lower quality pieces. Using young trees as a material for wood-based products is also more sustainable since trees absorb CO2 faster in their first years, so more carbon will be embedded in timber if we cut young trees and rapidly regrow new ones. If forests are well managed and the technology continues developing, the demand for timber can be covered by the forestry industry without problems.

In 2013 C.F. Møller Architects with DinnellJohansson proposed a 34-story wooden skyscraper for Stockholm. Image © C.F. Møller Architects with DinellJohansson

In conclusion, the challenges of global warming and emissions of CO2 should be solved partially through the densification of cities using timber as the primary material of construction. In order to achieve this, structural systems and timber-based products must continue to develop, and the forestry industry should be prepared to respond to a higher demand for wood in the future, which can be achieved by increasing the productivity and efficiency of the extraction of this renewable resource. Compact wooden cities seem to be viable and effective way of creating a sustainable built environment in which many people live. However, the adoption of wooden construction in cities needs to happen faster than it is taking place at present. This is possible, I believe, only through increasing construction regulations which promote the use of wood as a building material and the development of new and innovative wood technologies, in order to catch up with accelerating global warming.

Limnologen in Växjö, Sweden. Image © Midroc Property Development

1. Mayo, J. (2015). Solid Wood: Case Studies in Mass Timber Architecture, Technology and Design. New York: Routledge, p. 9.
2. European Commission for Research and Innovation (2016). Challenges Ahead. Retrieved from: http://ift.tt/1XkIu9x
3. US Green Building Council (2016). Buildings and Climate Change. Retrieved from: http://ift.tt/1IRHDAe
4. O’Connor, J., & Dangerfield, J. (2004, June). The environmental benefits of wood construction. In proceedings, 8th World conference on timber engineering (Vol. 1, pp. 171-176).
5. Ibid.
6. Jeska, S. & Pascha, K. S. (2015). Emergent Timber Technologies: Materials Structures Engineering Projects. Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag GmBH, p. 52.
7. Mayo, J. (2015). Solid Wood: Case Studies in Mass Timber Architecture, Technology and Design. New York: Routledge, p. 17.
8. Ibid., p. 15.
9. Ibid., p. 15.
10. Hoadley, R. B. (2000). Understanding wood: a craftsman’s guide to wood technology. Taunton press, p. 255.
11. Ibid., p. 256.

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