Timber Design Awards 2012
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Category: 8. Canterbury Rebuild Innovation
Most effective use of timber in architectural and engineering terms, as a response to the Canterbury rebuild – this award is open to both built and unbuilt.
- Enterprise Precinct & Innovation Campus (EPIC)
Timbercore - www.timbercore.co.nz
The EPIC build in Manchester Street required tenderers to demonstrate “build cost efficiencies, an inspirational and innovative design, efficient use of land, room for growth, and sustainability principles.” Timbercore’s solution meets all of these requirements and more.
When finished, this two-storey office complex will house 15 tenants with varying space requirements on a small site. It will also provide shared meeting rooms, a cafeteria, three toilet blocks, a lounge and one passenger lift.
The design needed to allow for the building to be relocated after five years. Timbercore’s solution provides a mixture of black metal exterior claddings broken by painted panels and windows, delivering an attractive façade reflecting the creative ideals of its tenants, and defying the ‘big box’ look of typical CBD buildings. The large internal public spaces created by the pitched roofs give a feel of permanence and grandeur, with staircases and bridges connecting tenancies.
Timbercore’s elegant engineering solution features screw fixing technology, contributing to the low mass of the timber structure. Foundations could therefore be kept to a minimum, with only 500mm-deep pads required.
Construction materials included 800 m3 of engineered timber plus 200 m3 of conventional timber framing, with composite timber flooring at both levels and exposed timber panels as bracing walls. Plywood linings provide the final architectural touch to this truly sustainable building.
For just $1,000/sqm finished Timbercore’s solution is cost competitive, simple and speedy to construct, and will be built to a standard to withstand 130 percent of Christchurch’s current seismic codes.
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