46 | Feature: Timber Design Conference
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Wood City architect Carl Bäckstrand said Swedish contractors are well-versed in timber building
Phoenix will be a sustainable neighbourhood
Wood city in Stockholm will be one of the biggest timber-based urban developments
◄ as the executive chairman of frozen food specialist supermarket chain Iceland, but is also chairman of developer Bywater Properties, which he co-founded with partner Theo Michell in 2006. Mr Walker said that sustainability was central to the ethos of Iceland. Consequently, it had stopped using palm oil and ended use of plastic packaging in its own brand food range. It aims for a 50% cut in food waste by 2030 and net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Bywater Properties was formed with sustainability and low environmental impact equally high on its agenda. The result is its focus on use of wood and, notably, engineered or mass timber in its building
developments. Its focus, says its website, is on ‘limited projects in specific cities we believe in and where we can make a positive sustainable impact’. The approach, it maintains, is good both for the planet and business. “We’re driven by the same philosophies as Iceland. It’s about more than pure financial return, but also working for the social and environmental good and meeting our ESG goals,” said Mr Walker. “Clearly, we’re not a charity. We need to make a profit to keep on doing what we’re doing. But building in timber also has a commercial aspect in terms of demonstrating our USP. Our approach also builds customer respect, which further adds to our commercial edge.”
Underlining Bywater’s focus on low carbon timber building, in 2023 it concluded a joint venture agreement with Sumitomo Forestry, the Japanese forestry and timber giant. Bywater SFC is described as an ‘end-to-end’ timber construction specialist with a goal of achieving over £1bn of assets, focusing on decarbonised construction in the form of mass timber real estate developments across the UK and Europe.
One of the first outcomes of the partnership
is Paradise, a mass timber-based six-storey office block in London boasting a wood content that locks away 60-years of the building’s operational emissions. Bywater sees opportunities for mass timber not just in whole new build projects, but also in refurbishment and renovation. This includes extending buildings vertically to use their so-called ‘air space’.
With building energy efficiency and use of renewables now at an increasingly advanced stage, the key to further reducing construction’s environmental footprint is to tackle embodied carbon. That is the sum total of the emissions resulting from the production, transport and erection of the particular building materials. Bywater sees mass timber as a prime solution; with wood not only sequestering carbon while growing and storing it for its life span, but also being low energy to produce and process compared to energy intensive materials such as steel and concrete.
“The embodied carbon in build is where the big emissions are and where they can be saved,” said fellow Bywater founding partner Theo Michell. “Mass timber is not the golden bullet to tackle embodied carbon, but it is an important part of the tool kit.”
BUILDING IN HARMONY WITH NATURE Chairing a panel discussion on the investment and bureaucratic hurdles faced by the timber building sector, Joe Giddings of Built by Nature highlighted its grant-making activities targeted at achieving its objective of a “built environment in harmony with nature”. In terms of carbon performance, he said, timber’s
TTJ | September/October 2024 |
www.ttjonline.com
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