CLT
Rising to the challenge of building a CLT house Doesn’t seem all that long ago that a prominent politician verballed the nation with the comment ... “life wasn’t meant to be easy!” Generally speaking, that comment was pretty much on the money. However, there is also a saying (much. older than the aforementioned pollie) that when the going gets tough the tough get going, and that brings us to the nexus of this three-part series of articles involved with construction of a CLT house in Sydney. [The main lead-up articles were in the last edition of Australasian Timber]. Finding an architect, or builder or structural engineer who had worked in CLT in Australia would be a rare find indeed, however, you would think that there would be lots of enterprising people out there. Fortunately, there are some forward thinkers eager to get their brains into gear and their hands dirty. With Chris and Anna Swadling’s Sydney CLT house there were three - architect Shaun Thodey of Thodey Designs, engineer Andrew Hastie of ACOR Consultants and builder Richard Wolak of Select Building Services.
RCHITECT SHAUN Thodey’s involvement was more by accident than by design. “They found us because we did a friend’s place who was actually a builder so we knew Chris (Swadling) through work,” said Mr Thodey. “We met them (Chris and Anna Swadling) onsite and they said they were having trouble, they’d spoken to three or four architects and they were all saying ‘no we don’t want to do it (using CLT), we want to use traditional methods’.” The Swadlings were determined to use CLT so it was clear they had to find the right architect and Thodey Designs was it. According to Shaun they got the job because “we were dead keen”. Being keen is exactly it because it opens your mind to possibilities. If you’re not in it 100 percent then your mind will find too many reasons for insurmountable problems. “When we met up with them (the Swadlings) the first thing that Chris said is that they had a 14 metre long recycled timber beam that he pulled out of a bridge,” said Mr Thodey. “He said ‘I want the house designed around that beam’. That was a really nice thing; he had set the
beam aside for years for his own house and what it did was it gave us a spine and a central point off which we could start the design. “That’s a really nice way to start. How do we want to incorporate this and how can we do this? “I said it can’t be decorative, it has to be used properly. “It became the central spine. You walk in and the whole ground floor area has this huge bridge beam that comes out with metal plates bolted to the side of it. That informed the whole design. Then we said what’s the orientation of the site, northern aspect and all that sort of thing.” Speaking with Mr Thodey it’s pretty obvious that he is a glass half full sort of person with enthusiasm and courage because he had never done anything like the CLT house before and knew nothing of the product. As soon as he got the brief he scooted back to his office and started to chase up material and information. “I actually called up the guys in New Zealand (Xlam) and had couple of chats with them about an overview of it, how it goes together and then details,” said Mr Thodey. Since he had never designed a house with CLT, Shaun chose to design the house in the first instance as he wanted it to look, and once the basic design was decided on he made it work with CLT. It wasn’t too difficult to make the translation to CLT because the layout had been kept quite square. Being open to different styles of building and different materials is important when you are facing a new project like this one, and a background in construction is not to be discounted either.
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AUSTRALASIAN TIMBER
Shaun Thodey The architect
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DECEMBER 2015
¢ S haun and Monica Thodey.
“My wife [Monica who is the other part of Thodey Designs] has a background in big commercial and civic design, and my original background is that I studied architecture and then I worked as a construction site manager for years,” said Mr Thodey. “I guess we have a good knowledge of how things should go together.” No doubt this was a real benefit alongside having already worked with consulting engineer on the project, Andrew Hastie of ACOR. “There was a bit of back and forth but we’ve worked with Andrew before, and we’ve got a really good relationship and that really helped,” said Mr Thodey. “He was pretty keen to learn about this stuff as well, because he’s a very proactive guy.” Proactive is the key because it’s all about process - the process of learning a new building material, a new way of building, a new design process but in the end you know in yourself if you are willing to have a go at doing something others won’t. “We really enjoy the process and we really enjoy the challenges of things like this,” said Mr Thodey.
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