WOODLAND BARN

Client: Lakes by yoo

London’s new homes need to meet high levels of sustainability, and this project illustrates how that can be achieved, thanks to its innovative construction method, which can be used for multi-unit schemes.

For The Lakes by yoo, we took the idea of a traditional Cotswold barn and reinvented it in a contemporary way. The Barn is a 21stcentury version of the classic rural building, crafted from local Cotswold stone and green oak, with double-height volumes and extensive glazing.

For us, modernity also means sustainability. This house gave us the opportunity to break with traditional materials and construction methods, and trial an innovative and more sustainable type of timber frame. The result is a building which has sustainability built into its very fabric.

The frame is made from cross-laminated timber panels. These are produced from kiln-dried, finger-jointed spruce and fir planks, which are cut into sheets, stacked at right angles and glued under a high-pressure bonding system in perpendicular layers. This creates a very dense and structurally robust engineered timber – as strong as concrete, in fact. Timber is the only truly renewable building material, and it also has the lowest energy consumption of any building material throughout its lifecycle. Using cross-laminated timber actually reduces carbon dioxide levels–the wood removes CO2 from the atmosphere, releases oxygen and stores carbon. Each cubic metre of cross-laminated timber panels will remove approximately 0.8 tonnes of CO2. Use enough timber in the construction of buildings and you could, theoretically, achieve negative CO2 emissions.

This home meets level 4 of the Code for Sustainable Homes because of its frame, but its design can be adapted for further sustainability, via, for example, photovoltaic panels, an air-to-air heat pump or geothermal pump, and connection to a green energy source. The Barn was completed summer 2015.