This year every part of the country, from the Shetland Islands to Cornwall, was represented in the Wood Awards entries and it was, in fact, in one of these remote locations that the overall Gold winner was found.
The New Shetland Museum & Archives in Lerwick, Shetland Islands, scooped the top prize, as well as winning the Commercial & Public Access category. Inspired by Lerwick’s traditional waterfront structures, architects BDP used prefabricated cassettes of Siberian larch to clad the four-storey Boat Hall, while throughout the museum, reclaimed English oak features in the floors, windows and restaurant furniture.
Two visitor centres in the Commercial & Public Access category were highly commended. Anglesey Abbey visitor centre in Cambridgeshire features western red cedar cladding, a southern yellow pine deck and European oak internal joinery, while at the Culloden Battlefield in Inverness, Scottish larch is used for exterior cladding and internal linings, with all other joinery in oiled British oak.
Double winner
The Structural award, and the special award for Offsite Construction, went to The Stadthaus, Murray Grove, which also won this year’s TTJ Achievement in Engineered Timber Award. Designed by Waugh Thistleton Architects and constructed using KLH’s cross-laminated spruce panels, the nine-storey structure is the tallest residential building in the world. Spruce also features in the Aston Martin Design Studio, which was highly commended in the Structural category. The laminated timber structure, manufactured off site, was erected and watertight in four weeks.
Simon Conder Associates, whose Pinions Barn earned Gold in 2005, won the Private category with Halligan House, a single-storey home featuring a European redwood roof structure and iroko fencing and decking. Alison Brooks Architects’ Herringbone Houses, featuring ipe cladding, were highly commended.
The Conservation & Restoration prize went to Whitestaunton Manor, a Grade I listed house in Somerset. The work, all in English oak, included restoration of a hammer beam roof, a coffered ceiling, panelling and medieval windbracing.
Highly commended in this category was Out of the Hat, a timber framed building in Tewkesbury which was on English Heritage‘s Buildings at Risk register.
The Furniture prize went to the Sleeping Dragon, an 8.5m curving oak seat, which the judges described as “a superbly executed and imaginative piece”.
They also highly commended Tim Jeffree’s “beautifully crafted” Cope Chest in Tewkesbury Abbey.
In the special awards, the Lindisfarne Castle Ticket Hut in Northumberland won the Best Small Project, while the “thoroughly well executed” New North Gallery at St George’s Church, London, was highly commended.
The Best Use of British Timber went to the “wonderfully imaginative” Collector Earl’s Garden at Arundel Castle, while the prize for Best Use of Panel Products, a category introduced this year, went to the Taylor Library at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
