What place is there for innovation in the timber industry?

The 2021 iteration of the Rencontres Romandes du Bois was centered around the thematic of using wood for sports and construction, as part of a broader attempt to make sporting events more ecological and lessen the impact of their infrastructure on the environment. Examples of this evolution range from designing an Olympic flame fuelled by local timber to the planting of forty-seven thousand trees and bushes comprising a whopping one hundred and thirty different species for the Tokyo 2021 Olympics. Other emblematic projects include the Centre Aquatique Paris 2024, a new Olympic swimming pool designed by Ateliers 2/3/4/, which will host the diving, water polo, and synchronised swimming events, while highlighting the versatility and creativity of the wooden elements it employs. The choice of timber-based structures planned in the athlete’s Olympic village in Saint-Ouen, designed by architect Dimitri Roussel of DREAM also underlines the desire of the sports world to progress towards a more sustainable, ecological design for large scale events. Closer to home, this is echoed by the design of a new sporting complex in Nyon, where the existing Colovray site will integrate new infrastructures including a stunning sports hall designed to echo the surrounding site, in harmony with the Jura mountain range behind it and the lakeside. The choice of local timber further emphasises the sustainable, holistic approach chosen by LOCALARCHITECTURE.

While these are undeniably steps in the right direction, discussions and debates taking place during the event, such as the one Prof. Weinand took part in, reminded us that flagship projects, however ingenious, must not be taken as symptoms of the evolution of the broader construction industry, including architecture and engineering. In reality, timber constructions remain a narrow part of the market and ecological concerns are often silenced by the roar of profitability. While it is undeniable that wood-based material is unquestionably a greener choice that the vast majority of construction materials, with a much lesser carbon footprint, it is also important to consider the origin and composition of materials employed. Local spruce and white fir, such as will be used in Colovray, has a much lesser carbon footprint than any imported lumber. Raw or minimally processed timber will be much easier to re-use, recycle or retire than timber plates containing large amounts of glue, which is practically – or entirely – impossible to separate from the wooden fibres, and the use of nails, screws, dowels, adhesives or welding during the construction process further drives up the cost of dismantling these structures.

A focus of IBOIS’s research, presented by Prof Weinand, has consisted of developing the use of integral mechanical attachments, (wood-wood connexions) without the use of additional connectors. This solves a great deal of the problems described in the preceding paragraph. During his presentation at the Olympic Museum on Friday, Prof. Weinand described how IBOIS research combines digital design tools, algorithmic geometry processing, structural optimisation and numerical simulation, as well as digital fabrication with methods inspired by traditional, local, joinery techniques, such as the butterfly joint, half lap joint, snap-fit joint, sunrise dovetail joint, and techniques inspired by Japanese architecture, such as the nejiri arigata joint, in order to open new possibilities within – but not limited to – the field of timber construction.

Prof. Weinand used the example of the Annen Head Office in Luxemburg to showcase how such methods allow for innovative timber constructions. The project is a prime example of and the most recent structure showcasing all design elements and features developed by IBOIS. It is composed of 23 discontinuous double-layered, double curved timber plate shells Each arch is a double-curved shell structure, with a design is inspired by Eladio Dieste’s Gaussian masonry vault. The span of the arches ranges from 22.5 meters to 53.7 meters, and the height and width of each arch are, respectively, nine meters and six meters. Each arch has its own exclusive freeform geometry design using custom developed CAD plugins. The project’s timber engineering was done by the Bureau d’Études Weinand, Liège (BE) within the knowledge and technology transfer agreement with the Laboratory for Timber Construction, IBOIS, EPFL, by Prof. Yves Weinand, Dr. Anh Chi Nguyen, Dr. Aryan Rezaei Rad, Dr. Christopher Robeller, Didier Callot, and Petras Vestartas. Such a structure clearly demonstrates that the methods developed in labs such as IBOIS are entirely suitable to real-life applications and allow for the creation of unique, large-scale timber constructions. This was notably raised during the debate centred around the problem of the transfer of innovation, which took place later in the afternoon between Stéphane Berthier, author; Prof. Emmanuel Rey, associate professor, LAST, EPFL; Thomas Büchi, master carpenter; and Prof. Yves Weinand, architect, engineer, director of IBOIS, EPFL, with Christophe Catsaros, independent art and architecture critic, as moderator.

Research such as is developed at the EPFL often remains largely unknown within the broader construction ecosystem, and gets buried within the labs where it was created. The question, then, would be how to draw it out into the light and fully exploit it on a larger scale? Prof. Weinand indicated that the answer to the marginalisation of timber in construction is not the development of a branch of study quasi exclusively focused on timber engineering, architecture and construction, which would be much too narrow, but rather to integrate it within school’s educational syllabus in a way that every graduate would be aware of the advantages and possibilities offered by timber structures and the use of wood in construction. This would open the possibility of an evolution not just of the timber industry, but of the construction sector as a whole. Timber could then naturally fit into a sustainable, ethical, approach reconnected with a 21^st century where it is no longer possible to ignore a rising ecological crisis, and younger generations are increasingly putting the intrinsic link between human and nature to the forefront of their concerns.