The tulipwood used to build MultiPly stores the equivalent of 30 tonnes of carbon dioxide and is replaced with natural growth in the American hardwood forest in 5 minutes
September 21, 2018 – MultiPly, a nine-meter high, carbon-neutral wooden pavilion made entirely of American tulipwood has opened to the public in the Sackler Courtyard of the V&A in time for the London Design Festival on September 15, 2018 and will remain there until October 1. The 43m3 of tulipwood that make up MultiPly store the equivalent of 30 tonnes of carbon dioxide and are replaced with natural growth in the American hardwood forest in just 5 minutes.
The installation is a collaboration between Waugh Thistleton Architects, the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) and ARUP, and illustrates how modular cross-laminated construction in hardwood is a viable solution to the current housing crisis. The structure is made with the first UK-manufactured cross laminated timber (CLT) panels.
One of the London Design Festival’s Landmark projects, MultiPly is comprised of a maze-like series of interconnected spaces that overlap and intertwine. It has been conceived and constructed to encourage visitors to re-think the way we design and build our homes and cities.
The three-dimensional structure is built out of a flexible system, made of 17 modules of American tulipwood CLT, with digitally fabricated joints. Like a piece of flat-packed furniture, the pavilion arrived as a kit of parts and has quietly and efficiently been assembled in under a week. At the crown of the structure is a module with a thermo-treated tulipwood interior layer – the first time thermally modified timber (TMT) has been incorporated as a protective layer in CLT.
MultiPly confronts two of the current age’s biggest challenges – the pressing need for housing and the urgency to fight climate change and presents the fusion of modular systems and sustainable construction materials as a solution. Given that it is built out of modules, the pavilion can be taken apart and reassembled in a new home after the London Design Festival.
“The main ambition of this project is to publicly debate how environmental challenges can be addressed through innovative, affordable construction,” says Andrew Waugh, Co-founder of Waugh Thistleton Architects, a studio that has been at the forefront of wood construction for decades. “We are at a crisis point in terms of both housing and CO2 emissions and we believe that building in a versatile, sustainable material, such as tulipwood, is an important way of addressing these issues.”
To keep up with population growth and deal with years of under supply, around 250,000 new homes would need to be built in the UK every year. In 2016/17, 184,000 new homes were built in the UK, a shortfall of approximately 66,000 homes. To increase supply to meet demand, we must change the way we think and build.
Waugh Thistleton Architects have been pioneering innovative uses of wood in construction for decades. MultiPly explores a new, more sustainable way of building, bringing together a readily available carbon-negative material – American tulipwood – with modular design. AHEC have worked with many great architects – David Adjaye, Alex de Rijke, Alison Brooks, and now Waugh Thistleton – to demonstrate the structural, aesthetic and environmental properties of American tulipwood.
Tulipwood is sourced from the Eastern United States, where the hardwood forest area is expanding at a rate of one football pitch every minute, and already exceeds 110 million hectares, equivalent to the combined area of France and Spain. This makes the material both sustainable and environmentally friendly, especially as it is one of the most abundant American hardwoods.
MultiPly uses a wood engineering technique known as cross-laminating, where timber planks are laid perpendicular to one another and glued together to form very strong, stiff and stable panels. CLT has traditionally been made of softwood trees. However, together with Arup,
AHEC have been experimenting with CLT made from fast-grown U.S. tulipwood for the past decade.
The research and projects undertaken have proven that weight for weight, tulipwood CLT is stronger than steel and concrete and can be machined to incredibly high tolerances. This makes it ideal for prefabrication and rapid assembly, reducing construction times by around 30%. Tulipwood is an inexpensive and easy to machine hardwood that is incredibly strong for its weight.
The use of tulipwood CLT means that large-scale timber buildings can be constructed without the use of concrete or steel. These properties, together with its dramatic marble-like appearance, make tulipwood a perfect pioneer hardwood for innovative timber construction. Tulipwood planks are imported from the U.S., but the panels for MultiPly have been manufactured in the Construction Scotland Innovation Centre (CSIC), the UK’s first CLT factory.
MultiPly would not have been possible without the contribution of timber from AHEC members – Allegheny Wood Products, Ballie Lumber, Bingaman Lumber Inc., Boss Lumber Corporation, Classic American Hardwoods, Collins Hardwoods, Latham Timber, Northland Forest Products, Parton Lumber, and Thompson Hardwoods Inc. Tulipwood accounts for 7.7% of the total standing volume in U.S. hardwood forests. Every year, even after harvest, the volume of tulipwood in the U.S. forest grows by 19 million m3, the equivalent of over 19 Olympic swimming pools per day.
About Waugh Thistleton Architects
Waugh Thistleton Architects is a research-oriented practice dedicated to designing buildings and places of the highest architectural quality that also acknowledge their impact on the environment. The studio practices sustainability in the widest sense of the word, focusing not solely on energy in use, but on embodied energy and longevity. The team believes passionately that sustainability and world-class design solutions should be one and the same thing.
Its holistic approach is based on the principles of reduce, reuse, recycle. Striving at every point to produce innovative and imaginative design solutions that harness leading
technologies, the quality of its buildings and its commitment to the use of timber construction has earned them an international reputation in environmentally sustainable architecture and design. For more information, please visit: www.waughthistleton.com.
About Arup
Arup is the creative force at the heart of many of the world’s most prominent projects in the built environment and across industry. With over 80 offices in 35 countries Arup has more than 13,000 planners, designers, engineers and consultants delivering innovative projects across the world with creativity and passion. For more information, please visit: www.arup.com.
About London Design Festival
The London Design Festival is a key constituent of London’s autumn creative season, alongside London Fashion Week, Frieze Art Fair and the London Film Festival. Established in 2003, its role is to celebrate and promote London as the world’s design capital and gateway to the international design community and it has now established a reputation as one of the largest and most exciting design events in the world. This year the Festival will run from September 15 – 23 and over 400 events and installations will be on offer across the capital, from an exciting programme at the V&A to plus over 300 partners who will participate in the nine-day Festival. For more information, please visit: www.londondesignfestival.com.
About SEAM Design
From their London-based studio and their outpost in Bangkok, SEAM Design provides independent architectural lighting design services to clients, architects and other design consultants located around the world. Supporting this diverse global portfolio is their experienced team of designers, whose professional and academic backgrounds touch all aspects of design, going beyond core competence via exceptional interests in experimentation, emergent design and technologies. SEAM has been a supporter to The London Design Festival and annual design partner to LDF’s talented artists and architects since 2011. For more information, please visit: www.seam-design.com.
About CSIC
The Construction Scotland Innovation Centre (CSIC) is one of eight industry-led and demand driven Innovation Centres supported by Scottish Funding Council, Scottish Enterprise,
Highlands & Islands Enterprise and 13 Scottish universities. For more information, please visit: www.cs-ic.org.
About Glenalmond Timber
Glenalmond is family run business with over 90 years of experience; employing a team of professionals, highly experienced across all disciplines within the timber industry. They can engineer and detail large section glulam and CLT projects, modular building components, feature trusses and bespoke prototyping. They operate a quay and distribution facility on Perth harbor with the largest low-pressure treatment facility in the UK where their in-house stevedoring team can accommodate vessels of over 4,000m3. For more information, please visit: www.glenalmondtimber.com.
About Stage One
Stage One are a creative construction and manufacture company working within the architecture, theatre and events industries. Collaborating with some of the world’s most creative minds, they have constructed each of the Serpentine pavilions since 2009; worked with RSH+P on a Prouvé House; manufactured complex façade panels for Zaha Hadid’s Chanel pavilion; and built Thomas Heatherwick’s iconic London 2012 Olympic cauldron. They combine innovative design, engineering and technology to deliver astonishing impact globally. For more information, please visit: www.stageone.co.uk.
About AHEC
The American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) is the leading international trade association for the U.S. hardwood industry, representing the committed exporters among U.S. hardwood companies and all the major U.S. hardwood production trade associations. AHEC runs a worldwide programme to promote American hardwoods in over 50 export markets, concentrating on providing architects, specifiers, designers and end-users with technical information on the range of species, products and sources of supply. In addition, AHEC also produces a full range of technical publications. For more information, please visit: www.americanhardwood.org.