The UK’s biggest solid timber panel school building has been officially opened and an even bigger education development in the material will start construction in the next few months.
The St John Fisher School in Peterborough has had a new sports hall and additional teaching facilities built using a total of 1,000m³ of the the prefabricated panels from Austrian manufacturer KLH. The buildings, part of an £11m refurbishment, were opened this week by Roman Catholic Bishop of East Anglia Michael Evans.
Architect GSS originally specified brick and precast concrete planks for the structures, but engineer Ramboll Whitbybird (RW) recommended the timber solution instead.
“We estimated that the timber panels represented a CO2 saving of 300 tonnes, which really excited the client,” said RW design director Simon Smith.
The sports hall, he added, has wall panels 12m high and construction of the timber shell took only six weeks.
Speaking at an RW press briefing, Mr Smith said that the practice saw a strong future or engineered wood building in the UK and had invested in specialist design software for solid panel construction.
The company is now working with architects Sheppard Robson and Kier Construction on the Norwich Academy which will use a total of 3,000m³ of KLH prefabricated panel.
“Building is likely to start in three months and using solid timber panels here represents an embodied CO2 saving of 925 tonnnes over other materials,” said Mr Smith.
