I came to the WoodSolutions Seminar with certain preconceptions about wood as a building material.
I'm pleased to say that almost all of those notions have been overturned or seriously questioned.
My own practice centres on heritage conservation at a domestic level where the timber components are small in scale and like the dimension stone, sandstock bricks, mortar and iron I deal with, the timber does its job. In fact, the 'low-tech' building techniques of all the old trades are surprisingly successful in overcoming the shortcomings of the various traditional materials.
Even so, I'm aware that wood can be affected by moisture, insects and fungus, and it burns. It lacks the bankable consistency of the steel or concrete that has often replaced it in modern construction.
So I settled back in my chair at the seminar, ready to enjoy images of exceptional timber buildings produced by specialist exponents such as Hermann Kaufmann and Liam Dewar whose clients, it seemed, were able to allow them to design new buildings in wood, without the time, labor and structural constraints normally implied by timber construction, with a low carbon footprint and cost in use to boot.
I think I was an ideal target for the seminar's promoters.
I expected to be told that modern engineered timber is available to replace, at some aesthetic cost, of course, the now expensive and rarely obtainable large sections and lengths of stable, air-dried structural timber.
What I didn't expect was to experience surprise, then enlightenment, at the potential of wood, engineered or not, as an economic and practical material for almost any building application. At wood's potential as a building material for the future, not just of the past...
The case studies confirmed my growing realisation that properly specified and designed, extensive yet economic use of wood with its environmental advantages is not only possible for a wide range of structures of various sizes, but that its performance can match its erstwhile replacements, even before considering the high energy inputs of modern materials such as aluminium and steel. It occurred to me that one of the few modern materials wood struggles to replace is glass, despite Troppo's efforts with screens and louvres.
Since attending the WoodSolutions seminar, I've been thinking about the changing role of wood in the business of building.
For centuries, we have razed trees and removed overburden to get at the mineral rocks below, then invested inordinate amounts of capital and energy in squeezing from the rocks the products which have allowed us to build our multi-storey buildings and large span structures without using a metre of timber.
Yet ironically the size and structure of the trees we have felled provide the clearest of clues to the potential of wood. Like a skyscraper, a tall tree is a cantilever structure - of cellular hydrocarbons rather than steel and concrete - secured by its roots - natural ground anchors. The entire structure of a tree is hierarchical in plan and section, like a skyscraper, and the little I know of botany leads me to think that the circulation system of a tree has similarities to the plumbing, wiring, HVAC and human transport systems of our buildings.
But we mined and smelted away, applauding the first cast iron bridges and the advent of reinforced concrete. While timber has remained the basic building material in certain places where industrial materials are hard to procure, the scope of wood as a building material has gradually been restricted to the structures of small buildings or those produced in low volumes, to elements such as floors and doors where the new materials generally could not compete, and to decorative treatments. There are, too, applications where wood is unlikely ever be used again, such as pipes and gutters, or piling.
With decent glues, engineered wood products appeared: plywood, hardboards and even paper laminates. Chipboards and laminated beams followed as engineered wood products became increasingly sophisticated and able alone or in combinations to match the performance of the wonder materials spawned by the industrial revolution. Specialised treatments and careful detailing have further extended the capacities of wood products in building by reducing the material's susceptibility to its traditional enemies.
Driving this evolution are not only the environmental imperatives that began to bite in the late 20th century and an awakening to the economic advantages of timber in an era of expensive energy, but a renewed respect and even affection for the material that formed the first crude shelters erected by mankind outside the cave.
I look forward with fascination to the future of wood in building, and perhaps to playing a part in it.