British architecture practice Studio Bark has worked with students from the University of East London to devise a roof-supporting column with otherwise unusable timber at a site within ancient English woodland.
Named Spindles, the project, which borrowed techniques from local chair making traditions, involved using small pieces of shaped wood to make a roof-supporting column.
The most important aspect of the project, Studio Bark architect Ella Thorns explained to Dezeen, was the approach the practice took to thinking about timber and responding to the particular ecological conditions of a site.
Studio Bark developed the Shingles project to find structural uses for otherwise unusable bits of timber
Spindles began when the studio was hired to build a family home on a wooded site in Buckinghamshire in the southeast of England. "We immediately realised that the woodland was in quite bad condition to someone who knows what that looks like ? which I didn't at first, but you can tell very quickly from looking at the floor of a forest, and there was just no growth happening at all," said Thorns. "It was very dead."
"We were there in midsummer. You should have this flourishing understory of shrubs and plants and things and there was just nothing, and a lot of the trees are very tall and spindly."
A structural prototype was made with wood that would have been rejected from sawmills
Working with advice from timber and forestry consultancy Evolving Forests...