A new world record will be set in March next year when a nine-storey apartment block - the tallest timber residential building in the world – is completed in Hackney.

The brainchild of architects Waugh Thistleton, the 29-apartment Murray Grove Tower has been commissioned by housebuilder Telford Homes and will be constructed using a cross-laminated timber panel system from Austrian company KLH.

The £3m project is being built on a 305m2 site in Shoreditch, surrounded by 1930s and 1940s brick-built local authority housing. With its all-timber structure and striking façade – inspired by the work of artist Gerhard Richter – it will form an eye-catching feature on the London skyline.

Murray Grove is also notable for its green credentials. Because of the proximity of other buildings in the densely populated London borough, it quickly became apparent to Waugh Thistleton that environmentally friendly solutions like wind turbines or solar, thermal or photovoltaic energy provision, simply were not appropriate.

“It meant we had to look into the actual construction of the building,” said Andrew Waugh, a partner at the London-based practice. “Through discussions with structural engineers, Techniker, and, in examining the carbon implications of a concrete frame building of that size and scale, we realised the amount of carbon it takes to construct a building like this would be a significant CO2 emission, even compared with the lifespan of the building.”

Timber was the obvious choice because of its carbon storage potential. Working closely with sub-contractor KLH it was found that using this form of construction would provide 210 years of stored carbon within the building.

Each of the timber panels is prefabricated, including cutouts for windows and doors. As the panels arrive on site, they are immediately craned into position, dramatically reducing the time on site. The entire nine-storey structure will be up and built within nine weeks.

“One of the principles of this practice is that we take sustainable buildings - in terms of environment and usage - incredibly seriously. What you don’t want is a bunch of trendy young architects doing something today that is ugly and imposing tomorrow.”

Not that the planning stages have been easy. The team met some quite serious challenges early on and had to re-address the way in which it looked at designing and planning the building. “With a concrete frame building of this size, you simply look at a grid and a core and fill it out with studwork or blockwork. Timber, where every wall is integral to the structure is a different challenge,” explained Mr Waugh.

The team had two options. One was to build volumetrically; effectively putting boxes one on top of the other. But, with this scheme, because there were so many demands on each floor with different plan layouts that approach simply would not have worked.

Instead, Waugh Thistleton developed the treating of the internal structure like a honeycomb, where every wall of the building is integral to the building. The structure also needed to allow for a 50% redundancy so that walls could be taken out without the building falling down. “It’s a bit like a giant game of Jenga,” said Waugh.

The cross-laminated timber panels are made from Austrian spruce, while the exterior cladding is made up of more than 5,000 individual Eternit panels across the building in three shades: white, grey and black. The 1200x150mm panels are manufactured by Eternit and made up of 70% waste timber.

Waugh Thistleton is also working on NHBC and BRE approval for the whole building, although essentially this refers to the performance of the structural panels. Waugh believes this is one of the things holding up cross-laminated timber panel housing projects. “It’s an incredibly obvious material to use for large-density housing – it’s quick (eight weeks from foundations to envelope) and has an exceptionally low carbon footprint,” he said.

“We’re satisfied that the building will produce some beautiful flats and a high standard of living,” added Waugh. “But, having said that, this is the first step in an investigative process. We need to reappraise how we work with this material because it offers different opportunities and different strengths and weaknesses.”

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