School Built From Wood by Sheppard Robson

I do go on about how I love wood as a construction material; it is renewable, it is reusable, it is warm and friendly and it sequesters tonnes of CO2. After almost a century of ceding commercial applications to steel and concrete, it is making a comeback in office buildings, apartments and schools. A good example is the proposed Waingels College in Woodley, Wockingham in the UK, which Canadians of a certain age will be interested to know is three miles from Reading.

Architects Sheppard Robson, known to TreeHugger as the designers of the first zero carbon house in the UK, describe the project:

Developer Willmott Dixon is replacing the existing college and asked Sheppard Robson to showcase the latest technologies in sustainable design. Computer designed cross laminated solid timber panels will create the school’s load bearing structure – a sophisticated ‘flat pack’ system.

The timber comes from sustainably managed forests, fabricated to high tolerances and erected on site with expeditious efficiency. Wood is a natural, renewable and inexhaustible raw material when sourced from a forest where every tree felled is replaced by another one planted. The timber structure has less embodied carbon than steel or concrete, creates minimal waste.

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