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Wood Awards 2006 Winners

UK Timber Architectural Prize – Winners News

Wood Awards Winners 2006

Wood Awards 2006 : Savill Building – Glenn Howells Architects
Windsor Great Park, southeast England, UK
Wood Awards 2006 Winner - Warwick Savill Building
Savill Building photo: The Crown Estate. Warwick Sweeney Photography
Received from Glen Howells Architects 291106

Wood Awards success for Buro Happold
Buro Happold-engineered timber structure wins Gold

Buro Happold is proud to have provided the structural engineering for the roof of the stunning Savill Building, which swept the board at this year’s Wood Awards.

As well as scooping the Gold Award – the ultimate accolade for outstanding design and craftsmanship in wood – the UK’s largest timber gridshell structure, designed by Glenn Howells Architects, was also a winner in the Commercial and Public Access category, as well as the Structural category.

An achievement both aesthetically and technically, the roof of The Crown Estate’s Savill Building, at Windsor Great Park in Berkshire, is a 90m long by 25m wide timber gridshell. It is a three-domed, double curved structure of sinusoidal shape, with the gridshell clearly visible on the inside of the building.

Officially opened in June, The Savill Building is the latest timber gridshell that multi-disciplinary consulting engineer Buro Happold has designed, continuing a lineage of lightweight, environmentally sensitive structures that goes right back to the practice’s roots 30 years ago.

Buro Happold also provided the structural engineering for the projects that were Highly Commended in the Commercial and Public Access and Structural categories – Broughton Hall Pavilion and Alnwick Garden Pavilion and Visitors’ Centre, respectively.

Wood Awards 2006 : Alnwick Garden Pavilion

Alnwick Pavilion photo © Adrian Welch

Buro Happold associate director and lead engineer for The Savill Building project, Richard Harris, attended Wednesday’s Wood Awards at Carpenter’s Hall in London. He said: “The Savill Building was a great project to work on and the end result is as impressive and inspiring as the whole team had hoped. It’s wonderful to have this backed up with the Gold Award.

“It’s also an honour to have this very public acknowledgement for some of our other timber projects. The practice’s aptitude for innovative design using timber goes from strength to strength and it’s a real compliment to have that recognised by these awards.”

Broughton Hall Pavilion provides an attractive communal facility at the centre of the Broughton Hall Estate in Skipton, North Yorkshire. The Pavilion serves the residents and business tenants on the estate with a large common room and spaces for meetings and events, as well as catering and service spaces.

Situated at the top of a historic walled garden, the contemporary single storey pavilion sits on a timber plinth. The central area has frameless glass facades front and back, and is flanked by timber clad ‘book ends’ housing the smaller rooms. The structure of the smaller rooms incorporates the laminated timber columns that support the large overhanging roof.

Buro Happold worked in close collaboration with Hopkins Architects on Broughton Hall Pavilion and the two practices have enjoyed further success with the Alnwick Garden Pavilion and Visitors Centre in Northumberland.

Located within the grounds of Alnwick Castle, the Pavilion and Visitors Centre are part of the ongoing development of Alnwick Garden – one of the largest visitor attractions in the North-east.

The buildings are similar in structural design, sharing a timber barrel-vaulted structure with diagrid roofs supported on timber masts. The main differences between the two are the architectural treatment of the internal space, the extent of solid and transparent roof foil cushions, and the inclusion of a basement beneath the Pavilion.

A key challenge was to provide a structural solution which would support the ETFE foil roof and application loads while maintaining the slender diagrid roof framework. Buro Happold achieved this by tying the column capitals which support the diagrid roof, creating a cable truss which provided intermediate support to the roof. This reduces the roof span and, consequently, the structural depth, thereby creating the aesthetic form required by the architect.

This year’s Wood Awards shortlist was chosen from a record entry of 206 projects and a further Buro Happold project – Robin House – was in the reckoning in the Commercial and Public Access category. Robin House in Balloch, Scotland, is a purpose-built children’s hospice which provides a bright and welcoming facility for terminally ill youngsters and their families.

Buro Happold is a multi-disciplinary international practice of consulting engineers established in 1976. It offers civil and structural engineering, mechanical and electrical engineering, quantity surveying, building services and environmental engineering, health and safety management, infrastructure and traffic engineering, ground engineering, facade engineering, fire engineering, computational fluid dynamics analysis, disability design consultancy, project management, urban design and a range of specialist CAD services.

Wood Awards 2006 – information from Glen Howells Architects