Building a timber future with Waugh Thistleton

Discover the power of engineered timber and how it might help us to build a better future for people and the planet.

This week we invited Andrew Waugh, co-founder of UK-based architectural practice Waugh Thistleton, to explore low-carbon construction with a focus on wood as a building material. Together with WGSN’s Executive Editorial Direction Bethan Ryder, Andrew explains the huge possibilities of cross-laminated timber (CLT), a super-strong construction material made from layers of kiln-dried dimensional lumber, for creating happier buildings and potentially cities of the future.

Waugh Thistleton Architecture has completed no less than 30 projects built with CLT in the UK and France. These buildings have not only proved engineered timber as a viable alternative to concrete and steel, but also offer financial and wellness benefits while nodding to biophilic design. Find out why Andrew believes “green concrete is greenwash” and if wood could be the key to building more sustainable cities.

Decarbonising construction

“You’ve got housing needs and the climate crisis. Both of them are exacerbating each other. As people move from the countryside to the city because of the climate crisis, the city needs to go larger, but that produces more carbon. So how can you build our cities? How can we densify our cities in a low-carbon way? And this material seemed to be a viable way of doing that – for the first time, a material that was low-carbon but we could build at scale.”

The benefits of using wood

“With office buildings, it’s getting easier to persuade a client that there is a cost benefit to building in timber, that you can rent timber buildings or sell timber buildings for more money, because people really enjoy being around timber. It reduces your blood pressure, makes you feel happier, reduces your stress levels and you sleep better at night in a timber building.”

Optimising the efficiency and use of timber

“We use a lot less timber per square metre than buildings before so we’re getting better, reducing the amount of timber that we use. We’re understanding the engineering capacity of the timber much better and that excites me a lot because we talk a lot in the practice about this architecture of sufficiency, that you do just enough to be sufficient.”
– Andrew Waugh, co-founder, Waugh Thistleton Architects

Head to Apple or Spotify to hear the full discussion on our Create Tomorrow podcast episode, Building a Timber Future with Waugh Thistleton.