More than 400,000 people have attended this year’s London Design Festival, one of the largest on record. Among the most popular exhibits was Vert, a timber cooling station designed by Diez Office on the parade grounds at Chelsea’s College of Arts.
Supported by the American Hardwood Export Council—longtime festival supporters —the station is a collaboration between AHEC, industrial designer Stefan Diez, and urban greening specialists at OMCºC. It explores the potential for engineered hardwood in form, function, and sustainability to create what Mr Diez dubbs a “Greening Machine.”
Made from red oak glulam—a timber species now making waves across Europe, Australia and India—Vert consists of triangular structures suspending biodegradable nets that form the framework for climbing plants rooted in textile planters. Also suspended are mesh benches in the shade of the “sails”, all greened by twenty different species of plants.
In addition to providing a cooling space for festival visitors, the installation is “a living ecosystem that enriches local biodiversity [and] serves as a habitat for essential insect populations.”
In an era of acute climate change climbing plants can be more effective [at reducing carbon] as they grow many times faster [than trees], require less root space, can be harvested and turned into biochar or recycled as raw material for energy generation.
The American Hardwood Export Council on the significance of Vert, which displayed at the London Design Festvial.
While the timber framing and bright orange benches make Vert look like an oversized children’s swing set at first glance, there is a logic to the structure’s shape. The triangular form minimizes materials, withstands lateral forces, and can accommodate the weight of the soil and plants.
There is also the potential for adjustment and replication, as envisioned by the collaborators: “The triangle also lends itself to modularity, allowing for the system to be extended or to change in direction to suit different settings, without affecting the resistance of the structure,” the AHEC said.
Mass Timber from Scrap: CascadeUp exhibits at the London Design Festival
Also on display was CascadeUp, the world’s first structure made from cross-laminated timber and glulam upcycled from construction scrap.
The demonstration, measuring 3.5 metres high, 2.5 metres wide, and 2 metres deep, follows years of collaboration between the University College London’s Circular Economy Lab and UK CLT, an R&D mill manufacturing mass timber from recycled wood off demolition sites.
“We can’t solve the climate crisis without transforming our built environment,” said Dr Colin Rose, Senior Research Fellow at UCL and founding partner at UK CLT. “CascadeUp fully embraces circularity – taking wood that would be chipped and downcycled or sent to the incinerator and remanufacturing it to make a sustainable alternative to high-carbon structural products such as concrete, steel, and brick.”
- To learn more about the London Design Festival, including some of the highlights from this year’s event, visit the official website.
