We are passionate about timber and its role in helping to create a sustainable future.’ This statement is at the heart of TRADA’s vision for the future. We cannot stress enough the pivotal role timber and wood products can play in reducing our carbon footprint.
Wood has been used by man for an enormous variety of purposes since prehistoric times. Through photosynthesis, trees trap large amounts of carbon dioxide, store it as wood and release oxygen. Every cubic metre of timber used instead of other typical building materials can therefore reduce CO2 emissions.
The ever-increasing importance of environmental issues, across the construction sector, makes this the prime time for TRADA and the timber sector to seize the initiative. Taking care of the planet is central to doing business and as the world’s only truly renewable construction material – supported by international forest management and chain of custody certification -
timber
has a unique place in the built environment of the future.
Over and above its many green qualities, however, timber for me is a joyous material. As new products come to the fore, it increasingly allows designers to push out the boundaries of what is possible in structural engineering and to fire the imagination, combining traditional values with cutting- edge design.
the Weald and Downland Museum and the Savill gridshell roof on the visitor centre for Windsor Great Park, eye- openers perhaps for those who associate timber with log cabins and new build housing.
The Savill gridshell in particular demonstrates clearly how modern technology and engineering expertise - Richard Harris led the Buro Happold team - can be combined with traditional craft skills. The three-domed double curved structure, 90 x 25 metres on plan, is the largest gridshell roof in the UK.
TRADA Chairman, Mike Cook of Buro Happold A vision for timber
My passion for wood began at the age of 18, in what nowadays would be called a gap year, on an internship with Ove Arup, working on the Mannheim timber gridshell. I knew then, too, that structural engineering was where I belonged. This also, coincidentally, led to my first visit to TRADA, to look at some tests on creep and joint slip for the gridshell members. It was good to soak up even a little of the wealth of knowledge TRADA consultants had to offer. It is a privilege, as chairman, to put something back and to help to ensure that TRADA remains as relevant to architects, engineers and other end users today as it was to me then.
By Buro Happold’s Michael Cook FREng, MA (Cantab), PhD, CEng, FCIOB, FIStructE is Chairman of TRADA, the Timber Research and Development Association, and lecturer on creativity at Imperial College.
However breathtaking, gridshell roofs are by no means the only aspect of the current timber renaissance on which TRADA seeks to build. Structurally, timber can now compete with steel and concrete frame, assisted significantly by the transition to the Eurocodes. This has meant a change in mindset for designers: firstly, every European country now uses the same design codes, and secondly, all structural materials will use the same design basis. No longer will some materials use limit state design and some permissible stress design, and no longer will different codes use different load factors for different load
combinations. In these respects, life for the structural engineer has been simplified, removing for many the barriers to using timber with confidence. And timber can now more easily be used in conjunction with other materials, which is important to acknowledge.
Our challenge as TRADA is to engage more closely with
architects and engineers to encourage them to work increasingly with timber and to carry our enthusiasm for this flexible, inspiring material across the wider construction sector. Our strategy for achieving it is to reinforce and develop connections between suppliers on the one hand, and specifiers, producers and users on the other. We have to reach to the top of the food chain, especially in the contractor sector, which plays such a pivotal role in building material selection.
The next major influence in my career was joining Buro Happold, a company which has always had a definite timber culture - and no fear of the unknown. Some of the well known timber projects Buro Happold has worked on include the Sheffield Winter Gardens, the gridshell roof of
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Equally important, TRADA will be exerting even greater influence on government to shape policy, regulation and standards, while working hard to ‘catch them young’ and encourage specifiers and end users to embed timber in their thinking from the outset. The new generation is an
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