Mole Architects has more awards than you can shake a stick at.
A look around its offices in Cambridge reveals a number of prizes, such as Daily Telegraph Small House of the Year for its Cavendish House project, while its Stackyard House won three awards in the 2015 RIBA Awards (East).
Another project, a private house (Madingley Road), has won numerous awards, including the RIBA East 2012 Spirit of Ingenuity Award.
Mole’s exploits have led to it being categorised in the Top 10 architectural practices in the UK by The Sunday Times.
For a practice averaging only about 10 staff, Mole – established in 1995 – is clearly punching above its weight.
Hallmarks of its work include a strong emphasis on sustainability, including use of timber as a structural material, and signature designs which think outside the box and are "gorgeous" and "fun".
Mole’s engaging founder Meredith Bowles ("Mole" is his nickname) reveals that he loved making models as a child.
"My interest in using timber stems from early on in life making things with the material," he says.
"I used to make balsa wood models. It’s brilliant now that after years and years of making models I can make buildings out of cross-laminated timber (CLT)."
Mr Bowles is very thoughtful about the build process and got a unique persepective during his early days of architectural work in the 1980s and 1990s, when he did a stint as a construction manager, running refurbishment projects in London.
This experience showed him about how inaccurate and inefficient building practices could be.
"There is an inherent inaccuracy which is in-built into the nature of construction that almost encourages bad workmanship.
"There is an accepted practice that we use successive trades to sort out the problems of the previous trades.
"Sometimes I would look at an old building being demolished and once you’ve stripped away the plaster, it’s surprising what you find.
"So, prefabricated timber frame appealed to me for the ease of construction and its inherent exactitude which can translate a drawing to a finished building."
He also found build speed and cutting out of wet trades important advantages.
Mole’s triple award-winning Cavendish House, a private house in Cambridge, is built using a cross-laminated timber and glulam structure. It is a bold expression of modern architecture in road of Victorian houses.
Another scheme, the Dune House, a collaboration with Jasmund/Vigsnaes Architects on the beachfront in Thorpeness also uses CLT, larch cladding and an adventurous multi-faceted roof to create a striking holiday home.
Mr Bowles’ own house – The Black House – sits on a glulam rim beam on piles in the Cambridgeshire Fens, using the Masonite Tradis timber frame system manufactured by Cumbria-based Eden Frame.
Mole has used various timber frame specifications on many other projects, using both large and small UK timber frame manufacturers, as well as overseas fabricators.
But while timber frame may be a step change from masonry in the accuracy stakes, he says it isn’t always perfect and there’s room for improvement.
"We have rarely had a prefabricated project that hasn’t had to be altered on site."
Timber frame panels on one project did not fit together properly and had gaps, while on another there were problems with the insulation.
"We brought in a thermal imaging camera to check the insulation in the panels and found about half the panels had about 25% of the insulation missing.
"It costs everyone a lot of time, money and aggregation."
"For people who have built with closed panels in the past and experienced settlement with the insulation, they won’t necessarily know about it. But they will find the building is mysteriously not as warm as it is supposed to be."
One of his best experiences was using overseas timber frame supplier Just Swiss/ Schoeb for the Stackyard House project, winner of the Ideal Home of the Year Solo Project in the 2014 Blue Ribbon Award, The 250mm deep closed panels featured pressure injected recycled newsprint insulation designed to eliminate settlement gaps during transportation.
He was very impressed by the factory in northern Switzerland and the owner’s holistic understanding of the whole build process and requirements.
"They really care about timber buildings, they have invested in their factory and understand the thermal requirements."
Mr Bowles is an advocate of the timber frame "breathing wall" which allows moisture to safely travel through the timber frame wall and help prevent harmful interstitial condensation.
"With normal timber frame, you make a closed cell on the outside of the plywood [sheathing board] with a polythene vapour control layer on the inside which would then be punctured with holes by tradesmen for services. You’re relying on bad workmanship, which is not a good option.
"So my preference is putting the sheathing board on the inside and wood fibre on the outside."
Mole has used these "reverse" breathing wall constructions on private housing projects with good results.
But using this approach on larger projects with tighter budgets is not so easy.
3D Modelling
"There is a big shift in ambition in construction which is yet to happen. 3D drawings and more integration are going to change things."
Mole’s work with Eurban on the Dune House was a good example of joined-up thinking.
"It was good. They provided a 3D model of the roof which we imported into our software. There was a good design exchange between the manufacturers and the architects at the right time."
On another project, Mole used The Timber Frame Company.
"They took our 2D drawings and produced them as 3D manufacturing drawings, then sent them back to us for cross-checking which was great."
He said 3D modelling would make a difference to the housebuilding industry and improve timber frame accuracy still further. But full integration of this approach was needed in the construction sector, and currently it is only at a half-stage of implementation.
"We are not getting paid to do it, so it’s not being fully integrated."
Getting early agreement on the build approach by all project partners is important, he argues.
On a £10m student apartment project in North Cambridge, Mole and joint architect Wilkinson Eyre proposed a CLT solution. But consultants rejected the approach on cost grounds and a concrete frame/metal stud build was adopted instead, despite the development having large aspirations for sustainability.
Ironically, when contractor BAM came on board the project it believed CLT would have been a viable option but by that stage too much design work had been done to change it.
Mr Bowles said the notion that developers think they can get a high quality sustainable build solution for the same price as regular build was "ridiculous".
He has made a number of observations about the building contractor sector that he thinks are holding back advancement.
The first is that many contractors now are actually money men with little construction experience, relying on sub-contractors to do the work and often hammering them down on cost.
"There is also a reluctance to embrace prefabricated and factory-built components.
Why they don’t want to make better use of this quality control is a mystery to me".
"It’s a perception issue [of prefabrication] which is stopping advancement."
The third is education – making building an aspirational industry to go into and promoting working with your hands as something that is great.
Training
A point often made in the timber trade is that there is not enough focus on timber construction on architectural courses, with the result that architects are overfed on steel and concrete.
But that is not Mr Bowles’ experience. Mr Bowles has spent time teaching at Cambridge University – he he also designed a timber frame architectural studio for the university – and says sustainability is part of the agenda for the students.
And as an examiner at Sheffield Hallam University he reports that students there are very conscious of the environment and sustainability with the role timber can play.
"Certainly, at these two schools there is an equal emphasis given on timber as other materials," said Mr Bowles. If anything it’s the other way around."
Whether this is typical of architectural learning across the board is harder to judge.
He said RIBA did not have any requirements for studying particular structural materials at a high over-arching curriculum level and that it’s really down to each university course on how they apply it.
Building Information Modelling (BIM), he added, was something that all architectural students were learning.
Mr Bowles said timber industry efforts to engage architects were important in fostering more interest in structural timber design.
Large-scale quality timber projects also have a strong role to play, citing BSkyB’s 3,000m2 new engineered timber educational facility in West London as an inspiring example.
Growth Plan
Meanwhile, in Mole’s back yard – Cambridge – a 15-year spatial plan for growth is set to keep many builders and architects, including Mole, busy in the years ahead.
The importance of the M11 corridor, growth in the local technology industry, university growth and plans for large new housing developments all bode well for Cambridge.
Mole is part of a team that designed the winning bid for a new project on the site of the former Waterbeach barracks on the outskirts of Cambridge. Here a new community of 6,500 sustainable new homes is planned across 716 acres.
"A lot of these projects are happening and everyone I am talking to around here is busy," said Mr Bowles.
With some of these large developments, local authorities are requesting that the plans are taken to a design panel to scrutinise their quality and make them better places to live.
This is a great area of interest for Mr Bowles who sits on the Cambridge Quality Panel and is co-chair of the Suffolk design review panel.
"As I get older I want to create places and communities for people that are nice to live in."
This helps counter the tendency of developers to look at their plans in isolation of factors such as how they relate to adjacent communities.
This assistance to the planning process, he says, increases the likelihood of developers’ projects being better than they otherwise would have been.
For Mole, there is no resting on its laurels.
"We care about what we do and most jobs are really good. It’s a competitive sector though. If you want to get work from the good clients you have to try harder than with mediocre clients. The better the job the more educated, informed and demanding they are, so you can expect more competition."
