Discussion: “Timber Wave” – The Construction of the Temporary Wooden Sculpture
The annual London Design Festival creates a platform for designers to explore materials in new ways. For the 2011 festival, the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) asked Amanda Levete Architects (AL_A) to design a temporary installation at the entrance to the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). The idea was to use American red oak to create a giant piece of furniture that would extend the museum into the public realm. The story of the project goes back to 1998, when Michael Hopkins decided to use American white oak for the courtyard roof of Portcullis House. White oak had seldom been employed structurally in Europe, and Arup, the project engineer, decided to undertake a program of full-scale testing. This showed that white oak was more than twice as strong as the softwoods normally used in construction and enabled Arup to use just 200 mm deep beams for the 20 m span. The impressive strength of white oak inspired AHEC to test the structural potential of three more species – Tulipwood, American ash and American red oak: despite being about 20 % less dense than white oak, American red oak was shown to be strongest.
