Initially, I have to confess, an invitation to write an article about a new toilet block in a country park didn’t exactly set the old journalistic pulse racing. But, I thought, at least it would get me out of the office and the weather was nice.
As it turned out, the story was more interesting than I’d anticipated – honestly! The company that invited me to do a piece on the block in Trosley Country Park was the builder Eco-Librium, a specialist in sustainable construction.
The building has a concrete foundation but, apart from that, is wood from bottom to sedum-roofed top. The frame is Douglas fir, the cladding and exterior joinery sweet chestnut and the surrounding area oak-decked.
The structure is impressive in itself and has become a popular port of call for visitors to the park – and not just for the obvious reasons. But it also has a wider significance. First, it underlines how timber is finding its way into an ever wider range of building applications.
It is also further evidence that, in the eyes of many construction clients, especially in the public sector, sustainable building increasingly equates with extensive use of wood. The owner of Trosley Country Park is Kent County Council and it wanted the toilet block to be an ‘exemplar’ of environmentally-friendly construction and a showcase for abundantly available, but under-used Kent-grown coppiced chestnut.
Finally, the building highlighted a refreshingly pragmatic take on timber certification from builder, architect and local authority. Some of the wood used is FSC-certified, but the chestnut isn’t certified at all. Everybody knew where the timber was from and were satisfied for themselves that it was ‘sustainable’. Of course there are still those exclusively attached to one form of certification only. But the “horses for courses” approach taken at Trosley Country Park does seem to be taking root, and will become even more embedded if, as expected, Defra’s Central Point of Expertise on Timber decides to put the PEFC and SFI certification schemes on a par with those of the Canadian CSA and the FSC when it comes to timber specification for government projects.
And, if you want to know more about Trosley Country Park, the article will appear in TTJ’s sister title Timber Building in September.
