Waugh Thistleton Architects, in collaboration with the American Hardwood Export Council and ARUP, has won the Small Project Category at the annual Wood Awards for its design of MultiPly. The project is a carbon-neutral, modular cross-laminated tulipwood pavilion first unveiled at the V&A during the London Design Festival in September 2018.
The winners of the annual Wood Awards were announced at a ceremony held on 19th November at Carpenters’ Hall in London. Established in 1971, the Wood Awards aims to recognise and encourage outstanding design, craftsmanship and installation using wood.
MultiPly was one of London Design Festival’s Landmark projects, and a collaboration between Waugh Thistleton Architects, the American Hardwood Export Council and Arup. “MultiPly is the first ever structure made from UK-manufactured CLT, and we are delighted the judges have selected it as a winner,” explains Andrew Waugh, co-founder of Waugh Thistleton Architects. The judges praised how its simple design cleverly communicates the power of modularity.
The vertical maze of stacked modules and staircases creates labyrinthine spaces that intertwine, inviting people to explore the use of wood in architecture and reflect on how we build our homes and cities. The pavilion has been shown in three locations, each iteration taking a different form. The unassuming assembly of modules belies the engineering challenges created by the thinness of panels, significant cantilevers, and the complexity of designing a structure that can be reduced to a set of parts.
MultiPly provided an opportunity to push the boundaries of CLT construction. Like a piece of flat-packed furniture, it arrives as a kit of parts and can be quietly assembled in under a week.
Designed around the principles: reduce, reuse, recycle, MultiPly demonstrates how panelized, CLT buildings can be reused and reconfigured at the end of their life. The original pavilion was taken apart and reassembled in two different locations: in front of the Building Centre in London, then on to Milan Design Week in 2019. It will be shown in a new iteration in Europe in 2020.
“The main ambition of MultiPly is to address how environmental challenges can be solved through innovative, affordable construction,” says Waugh. “We are at a crisis point in terms of both housing and CO2 emissions and we believe that building in a versatile, sustainable material such as tulipwood is an important way of addressing these issues.”
“Waugh Thistleton Architects has been pioneering innovative uses of wood in construction for decades. ‘MultiPly’ explores a new, more sustainable way of building, bringing together a readily available carbon-negative material – American tulipwood – with modular design,” says David Venables, European Director of AHEC.
