TRADA’s National Student Design Competition competition for 2015 – titled Airspeed – saw students challenged to develop a wide-span aircraft display structure at the Yorkshire Air Museum near Elvington.
Airspeed, like the Velocity contest before it, is part of TRADA’s University Engagement Programme. It encourages students to explore timber design for a real application, with real constraints and, in the case of this year’s project, a real chance of getting built. It’s a way of communicating the timber message and creating timber advocates for the future.
The idea for Airspeed came out of a conversation with Professor John Edmonds during a visit to the architecture school at the University of Nottingham. He is also Chair of Trustees of the Yorkshire Air Museum and, in telling me about the museum, which is home to a wide range of historic aircraft and the Allied Air Forces Memorial, he said the museum had outline planning permission to expand their exhibition space with a new hangar. So a brand new TRADA competition was conceived.
A brief was developed tasking students with designing an operational and display hangar suitable for aircraft with a wingspan of up to 35m and tail height of 10m. It also had to include a main visitor ‘gateway’ to the museum entrance that reflected the Airspeed ethos, construction methods and materials.
The competition benefits from generous industry sponsorship. Wood for Good, Arch Timber Protection, B&K Structures and Vastern Timber supported us this year. Designs entered included arched structures, gridshells and space frames, while glulam, sawn beams, LVL and CLT were the materials of choice.
The 2015 shortlist saw two entries each from the engineers at Imperial College London and University of Edinburgh with architecture students from London Southbank and University of Nottingham filling the remaining places.
The winner
It was a tough decision but in the end we gave a joint first prize to the University of Nottingham and London South Bank University, with the Best British Timber prize awarded to Imperial College London.
University of Nottingham’s Johnson Enyenihi and Zaid Nachaw drew inspiration from famous sculptor Antony Gormley, with the footprint of their design an organic shape curving behind the existing hangar with a bridge linking the two buildings and an outside forest walk. Using European whitewood glulam and sawn whitewood and oak, a complex mix of ribs and lattice work form the structure of this exciting, almost fully-formed museum exhibit within the hangar.
London South Bank University’s entry from Andreas Christodoulou featured an elegant mix of glulam and curved trusses with a wood wave ceiling. Utilising sweet chestnut both for the woodwave and the glulam, the design creates a very open space perfect for displaying aircraft. Sweet chestnut was used again along with canvas in the gateway design that echoes the museum’s HP Victor.
The Imperial College team of Edrea Pan, Chloe Detanger, Jack Wilson and Darren Ramdoo used the flight of aeroplanes to create an exciting gateway and draw visitors into the museum. The design of Airspeed’s AS.10 Oxford plane inspired the profile of the hangar design. Using a varied palette of glulam, CLT, Douglas fir beams and sweet chestnut cladding they produced a super project with British timbers.
