“Somebody from the US said the Brits use timber as though they’re wearing white gloves,” said Roddy Langmuir, senior director and head of the design review team at Edward Cullinan Architects (ECA).

“It’s only used for cabinet joinery and, when it is used for something like cladding, there are lots of stainless steel bolts fixing it back: it’s not used with an understanding of its properties and its potential.”

Langmuir is passionate about timber. A softly-spoken Scotsman, he is on the boards of both Architecture and Design Scotland and TRADA, as well as an external examiner for Nottingham University.

While he might not wholly agree with his transatlantic colleague’s comments, you sense disappointment when he confides: “You see timber used across so many housing projects as just ‘wallpaper’, with very little sense of construction going into the ubiquitous cedar cladding job.”

It’s the antithesis of the approach at ECA, a practice that, since its inception in 1964 by Ted Cullinan, has forged a reputation designing carefully crafted and innovative buildings that respond thoughtfully to both their client and their context.

This depth of understanding has been recognised in the industry: the practice has won numerous awards from the RIBA and AIA, as well as timber-related accolades such as the Wood Awards Gold Award and the European Wooden Facade Award for the ground-breaking Weald & Downland Gridshell project.

“Historically, it goes back to when Ted was working on his own, building houses,” said Langmuir. “As a self-builder, he was putting cheap softwood together and trying to define a way of building up buildings that allowed you to use timber in a very easy and direct way so that it would weather well.

“He developed a layering technique that followed some aspects of arts and crafts but also followed a lot of modern work that was happening in Canada and the west coast of America. That’s where the roots of timber are in our business. Those houses that Ted built in the 1960s have an architectural reputation – and are still looked on as innovative today.”

Laura Marr was ECA’s project architect of Barge Arm, a mixed-use regeneration scheme at Gloucester Docks for developer Crest Nicholson. “Timber can look really awful or really brilliant, depending on how you detail it,” she said.

The project consisted of two buildings, one with 67 apartments and ground floor retail space and another with 17 apartments, ground floor retail space and a 256-space car park. Timber was used extensively, both internally and externally.

The size of the large residential block meant coming up with a way of breaking down the building’s monolithic appearance while, at the same time, harmonising it with the surrounding Victorian warehouses. The solution was a black lattice timber screen, on the one-bedroom apartments, which were pulled back slightly.

“You have to be careful mixing materials, otherwise it can look confused and wilful,” said Marr. “The use of cladding at Barge Arm was a way of breaking down the facade and creating a building that was visually less affronting. It also reflects the organisation of the plan. So often you see buildings where the envelope cladding is divorced from the plan and doesn’t reflect the internal layout.”

At ECA, the use of timber is never an afterthought

At ECA, the use of timber is never an afterthought. Take the current project at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh to build a new visitor facility, dubbed “The John Hope Gateway – Scotland's National Biodiversity Centre”. Due to open in 2009, the Gateway is heralded as a “shining example of green construction and sustainability” and uses timber heavily.

“At the moment, people go to the Gardens and they think ‘what a wonderful park the city has provided for us’,” explained Langmuir. “But there’s actually very little explanation about what the Institution does. The Gardens’ researchers collect seeds from around the world, grow, study and analyse them. This is a living experiment and the building will be there to tell this story.”

Slate walls frame the visitors’ entrance to the Gardens, while two botanically-important trees hug the approach. The new Gateway building is set behind the walls. “It’s not just an entrance to a building but to the whole Gardens, which we want people to see first,” said Langmuir. “We’re using glulam, and a column system that runs up through two floors, carrying a first floor beam and a roof beam.”

He said many people think that using timber is all about a small scale, small span ‘cottage’ approach to building. ECA is trying to use timber in a much more structured way.
However, he’s still painfully aware of the disparity between the use of timber for building in England, and Scotland, where it’s the dominant material. Part of the problem, he believes, is a lack of engineers skilled in working with timber.

“Engineering students spend around seven hours learning about timber in their whole course. There are great exceptions, like Napier and Bath, but if engineers come out of university and need to be apprenticed in companies like Buro Happold before they can be confident in timber design, you’re not going to get the skills on a wide scale.

“An architect will work with an engineer on a large project and if that engineer doesn’t have skills in timber, then the frame design will automatically tend towards steel or concrete. The discipline of designing in timber has to go right back through the education system.”

Laura Marr said there are also other reasons why timber is not an automatic choice. “We are moving more towards different ways of procuring buildings, so architects have less choice about what the building is constructed out of because many developers will just make a decision based on the apparently easier and more familiar options of steel or concrete, rather than engineered timber. 

“It can be difficult to push boundaries because it’s so tied up in bureaucracy,” she added. “The other thing is that you have to have third-party accreditation for everything, for build-ups as well as fabric skins. Timber is a difficult one because there aren’t BBA certificates for build-ups, which is something I’ve suggested that TRADA should be looking at. It’s an expensive process, but once it’s done, people can take those details and satisfy insurance companies.”

Supply is also an issue, said Langmuir, who is working with engineered timber supplier, KLH, on the Royal Botanic Gardens project. “People want to use timber; they know it’s sustainable, but it’s actually quite difficult to obtain. We will always be limited if there are only one or two suppliers where we can get our material from. Generating engineered timber in the UK would be a big boon.”

The project comprised two residential blocks

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