CLT panels used in award-winning house
Designed by Wilkinson King Architects, the house replaces a 1950s cottage and is a country retreat for its London-based owners.
The first floor walls and roof structure are self-supporting and fabricated entirely from CLT panels, supplied by KLH UK. A total of 143 panels were used for the first floor superstructure.
The CNC cutting technologies used in CLT production resulted in excellent dimensional stability, both in overall panel size and for structural openings. This allowed individual panels to be shaped and for edges to be chamfered so that they came together to form a continuous ceiling soffit with no visible joints.
The CLT spruce panels also act as the finished surface of the interiors and give a warm and a tactile quality to the bedrooms and circulation spaces.
The use of the CLT panels allowed this very complex element of the design to be built very cost effectively and also extremely fast; they were assembled on site in only ten days.
Commenting on the structure, Rachel Betts, of structural engineers Price and Myers said: ‘The structural properties of CLT lent themselves to this project and in particular to the geometry of the roof, which is formed of triangulated pieces of CLT. The CLT roof panels span one way onto loadbearing CLT walls below, which in turn are supported off a steel frame at ground floor level.
“The valley, which is formed between the roof panels, naturally provides a stiffened section due to the increased depth of the panel, which helps reduce the deflection of the roof.”
The entire first floor of the building is clad with western red cedar, selected primarily for the way it ages naturally, as it was important that the building would sit well in its rural setting.
Untreated cedar ages over a short period of time to achieve a silver colour, one which matches the colour of the bark of trees close to the building; the appearance is especially impressive in winter. The durability and weathering of cedar was also a very important factor when choosing the species.
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