It was a long wait for Kevin Hill of Venturer Timberwork to see one of his biggest and most complex Mass-Engineered Timber (MET) projects officially open to the endorsement of Government officials and the delight of a very patient Singaporean population.
“Jurong Lake Gardens completed today (Sunday, 8 September). Great to be part of this project, one that straddled Covid with the consequence of delay and disruption, but one that ultimately prevailed,” says Mr Hill.
Venturer Timberwork delivered several beautiful MET buildings designed to be modern and functional yet sympathetic to several of the original structures from the 1970s.
I was honoured to play a role as reporter and interviewer in the early stages of building the six MET pavilions in 2021—in the middle of pandemic lockdowns and restrictions—which included going to the muddy construction site, complete with hardhat and heavy boots.
This resulted in at least one video produced for the Ministry of Tropical Construction on YouTube:
As Malaysian newspaper The Star reports:
As visitors cross the White Rainbow Bridge into the Chinese Garden, many will recognise the iconic Grand Arch, which has been renovated to offer an unobstructed “open window” view of the garden.
The arch’s walls have been demolished. Mass-engineered timber (MET) was used to form a horizontal structure behind the arch to house the Jurong Lake Gardens Gallery, which tells the gardens’ development, and a restaurant.
Over at the Japanese Garden, the large Guesthouse, also constructed from MET, taps natural air circulation to stay cool.
Kevin Hill continues to be enthusiastic about MET for tropical locations and says since Jurong Lake Gardens was built, good progress has been made across the sector:
“We are seeing a higher degree of regionally verified engineered wood to balance out materials imported from further afield. We also have a much better grasp on auditing claims around GHG emissions and stored carbon, essential in terms of the positive impact of climate claims.”
Kevin Hill on the take up of MET across Singapore and wider Asia.
“Less transport, more regional employment, and a higher value placed on regionally harvested verified materials that work harmoniously with more traditional approaches, like mass timber bending frames with bracing cassettes.”
“We are grateful that more brands are facilitating our early participation in scheme design, leading to the creation of balanced, optimised specifications long before projects are tendered out.”
He also believes that the wider uptake of wood as a climate response needs input from many sources both near and far, ideally all verified with the same independent audit process that can equally present important climate metrics.
He points out that Venturer intends to audit the net biogenic stored carbon in accordance with ISO 14064 GHG standards, which is estimated to be around 1 500 tonnes CO2e or an equivalent offset of the power consumption of about 600 local households.
By adopting DoubleHelix’s Wood Product Protocol, Kevin Hill believes one can preserve a digital twin or tokenise (using a smart contract) of all the components, including compliance data for ‘reuse as intended’ at the structure’s end of life.
“All in all, bringing more value by adding measured climate impact mitigation, not just another pretty narrative”, he quips.
It is good to see that the National Parks Board acknowledges the beneficial role MET plays on this site:
The Gardens will showcase a new method of construction using Mass Engineered Timber (MET), which is more sustainable and productive. MET comprises engineered wood products with improved structural integrity. The building components are prefabricated off-site and assembled on-site, thus reducing construction time and improving productivity.
Its high strength-to-weight ratio makes it easier to handle than steel and concrete, allowing it to be installed more easily in a shorter amount of time. MET buildings can be built four times faster than concrete buildings, with less noise, clutter, and waste.
MET can also help save on material use as it can be left exposed without the need to apply finishing material.
The Guesthouse will be built in GLULAM (a type of MET), which has the unique capability of spanning large distances without the need for supporting columns.
Other buildings built using MET include the Rainforest Pavilion in Lakeside Garden and the Water Lily Pavilion in the Japanese Garden.
To conclude this piece for Wood Central, I cannot help but draw on an article I wrote for Wood in Architecture at the time of the big project in Jurong Lake Gardens: Timber buildings go beyond Net Zero to achieve Whole Life Carbon status.
When I visited a building site in Singapore recently to inspect six timber pavilions being constructed for the local National Parks Board, Kevin Hill of Venturer Timberwork—undisputedly the most experienced MET builder in Asia—didn’t hesitate to confirm that his MET load arrived on site from Austria and Finland and is “carbon negative.”
Let’s be clear: You’re carbon negative if the amount of CO₂ emissions you remove from the atmosphere is bigger than the amount of CO₂ emissions you put into the atmosphere. Your impact is positive, meaning you’re actively doing something to better the climate.
Why Kevin Hill is convinced that MET is the best construction material:
- The carbon contained in the wood is safely retained in the building itself,
- The timber is responsibly harvested from sustainably managed forests certified by PEFC, for example, and there’s no deforestation or other controversial sourcing involved,
- Even the carbon footprint in freighting the ideal timber from Europe to Asia is much less than the footprint of the heavier imported steel or concrete used for most buildings in Singapore.
