Amillennium dome constructed in the heart of a south-west Scotland forest has proved considerably more popular than its somewhat larger and more infamous cousin in Greenwich.
The 100ft diameter edifice stands on Forestry Commission land in the Forest of Ae, 10 miles north of Dumfries, and is constructed almost exclusively from locally grown timbers. It has already staged a craft fair, a Hallowe’en bash and, towards the end of last month, a symposium addressing the issue of creative design for timber construction and product. And according to Linda Mallett, one of the leading lights behind the project, there is widespread public support for retaining the building beyond its scheduled de-construction date.
The building represented ‘a massive scaling up’ of previous experience for Sam Barlow, a self-employed designer based at the nearby hamlet of Auchencairn, who saw the project through to final completion. ‘I used a technique developed from other structures – such as stages – but I had never done something on this scale before,’ he said.
The dome is constructed around a series of poles of 40-50cm thickness at their base, with a dozen main A-frames ‘cantilevered into the centre and pulled down’, Mr Barlow explained. While the ground supports are of larch, the main timbers are all of sitka spruce lashed together using rope. All trees for the project were donated by Forest Enterprise.
The bulk of the work was completed by a three-man team – including Mr Barlow – although significantly more hands were required towards the end of the project to assist with the flooring, which comprises 2×4 studding levelled on logs with wedges and chipboard on top.
Wood cutting for the dome began on August 15 and the entire project was completed in around two months. ‘The major challenge was the weather,’ said Mr Barlow. ‘It started raining two weeks into the project and it didn’t stop – for two weeks, we could not do anything. It was also a problem to have to work at height because climbing the poles made it a slower process and, at one point, we had to go back into the forest to get thicker poles.’
Nevertheless, all difficulties were surmounted within the given timescale and Mr Barlow was left to reflect – with some surprise – on how closely the final construction mirrored the behaviour of his original 1:50 scale willow stick model. Indeed, he suggested to TTJ that the dome could last ‘for four to six years’ if left in the forest, with ultra-violet degradation of the ropes likely to be among the first problems to arise.
Mr Barlow acknowledged the major role performed by Ben Gardiner of Design & Build who ‘solved a lot of the technical problems’ associated with construction of the dome, and he also congratulated Linda Mallett and Robbie Coleman of Dumfries & Galloway Arts Association (DGAA) for ‘commissioning something like this in such a place’.
Linda Mallett, a freelance artist working on DGAA’s millennium project, said the dome was designed to represent the Earth in an overall depiction of the four elements. The edifice demonstrated what could be achieved with timber ‘in a low tech way’, she said, and had drawn a ‘very positive’ response from architects.
No planning permission was sought for the dome, so it will remain in its complete form for only the next two weeks, Ms Mallett said. At that point the roofing material is likely to be removed, but the floor and structure will remain in place ‘for the foreseeable future’. Given the dome’s popularity, the aim is to set up a management group for the longer term.
Ms Mallett suggested: ‘It could be re-roofed and re-floored in the future – perhaps as a summer venue. There is a groundswell of public opinion that would like it to stay.’ Somewhat tongue in cheek, she told delegates to the wood symposium: ‘Hopefully, it has got more of a future than its namesake.’
Appropriately, one of the major events staged within the dome was a symposium entitled ‘Wood – working for the future: Creative design for timber construction and product’, which included a debate with the somewhat provocative title ‘Planning regulation is the biggest hold-up in timber design’.
According to the debate chairperson Hilary Grieve, discussions tended to confirm that the approach to planning was ‘a reflection of the public view’. She explained: ‘When people think of buildings, they see a cottage with chimneys at both ends and white walls. The public perception is that timber does not last very long and so timber people have got a job to do to change that perception.’
A solicitor and NHS Trust chairperson who is keen to maximise the benefits of local forestry, Mrs Grieve noted: ‘There was a lot of strong feeling among delegates [at the symposium] that they were hitting their heads against a brick wall when it came to planning – they blame planners for not letting them do things with wood. But producers have got to educate designers and architects about what can be done with wood, while designers and architects have to tell producers what they need. It is a two-way process, a partnership – a question of education for producers, planners and the public.’
Also involved in the panel discussion on planning was Volkmar Nix, conservation officer with the local Dumfries & Galloway Council. He pointed out that, although planning had an important part to play in the development process, it represented only one facet of the enabling process. In particular, Building Regulations were based on a separate legislative framework and might have considerable impact on final schemes.
On the plus side, Mr Nix noted that planners were increasingly encouraged by government – for example, through ‘NPPG18 – Planning and the Historic Environment’ – to consider ‘sustainability’ as an essential facet of the development process. ‘There is now increasing recognition,’ said Mr Nix, ‘that the use of wood in building can be an important contributor to sustainable development as well as good quality design.’ Natural stone and slate might have been dominating the Scottish countryside of late, he added, but there was certainly a recognition in latter-day policy development relating to heritage issues that ‘wood has a legitimate role to play’.
Mr Nix urged those interested in promoting wood as a building material to take a more active involvement in the drawing up of development plans. Acknowledging that use of wood as an external material or as a substantial visible framing material remained relatively unusual, he said it would be helpful if developers recognised that less conven-tional developments of this kind naturally raised questions about design and therefore required more detailed consideration at the planning approval stage.
The symposium had begun earlier in the day at nearby Barony College where speakers included the ever-entertaining Archie McConnel of local firm McConnel Wood Products. He emphasised that, in using home-grown timber, it was important to ‘work to its strengths’ and to develop ‘our own designs and ideas’ rather than attempt slavishly to compete with what was being produced in other countries.
Mr McConnel believed that much could be achieved by ‘borrowing from the past’, pointing by way of example to ‘ply tubing’. Used extensively during the war, the speaker explained that this product had subsequently ‘died a death’ owing to the cheapness of steel and the emergence of plastics. Nevertheless, it exhibited better strength properties than its aluminium counterpart and could find use today, for example, as a tubular frame material for housing. As well as having an excellent strength to weight ratio, the tubes would provide excellent housing for electricity cables or water pipes, he contended.
On a more general point, Mr McConnel argued that sophisticated markets for timber could only result from sophisticated forest management and he claimed that it was the responsibility of the forest owner to try to use the forest correctly.
