Walk down Rivington Street in Shoreditch, east London, and your eye will be caught by a gleaming glass box encased in a slatted tulipwood façade. This auburn-hued new build is, in its creators’ estimation, the tallest mass timber office building in London.
Mass timber is a type of engineered wood that is either glued or nailed together in thin layers. This makes the timber light yet strong, and far more resistant to fire than the oak beams of yore: in short, it is an excellent building material. Most importantly, its production emits far lower levels of emissions than other more common building materials, such as steel.
The built environment contributes 39 per cent of the world’s annual carbon emissions—through the creation of building materials (5 per cent), construction (6 per cent) and heating (28 per cent). If we are to lower our demands on the planet, mass timber can help.
It’s an argument that Andrew Waugh has been making for years. He is the co-founder of Waugh Thistleton Architects, the practice responsible for the Shoreditch new build. I last saw him at its opening in January. Warmly lit and full of pleasingly tactile exposed wood, the place reminded me of a WeWork made by the elves of Rivendell.
Today, in April, Waugh and I are talking about the new building—the “Black and White Building” as it’s called—and the future of architecture. We meet at Waugh’s practice, also in Shoreditch. Accompanied by his border terrier, Pepper, we stroll to a nearby park.
Earlier in his career, Waugh thought that timber would be a straightforward swap for concrete. But it became apparent that “one needs to design quite differently”, both visually and structurally. Others in his industry are curious: “We’ve had a lot of architects come and kick the tyres.”
Through architecture, we can begin to celebrate some things in society we’ve forgotten
Waugh, 56, is at once affable and unafraid to pull punches. He says that Bloomberg’s newish UK headquarters near the Bank of England—supposedly the world’s most sustainable office—is “an utter piece of greenwash”. He is equally dismissive of a growing trend, apparently common among architects, of becoming vegan but otherwise carrying on as normal—in other words, still causing tens of thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions. “It just won’t rub.”
Nor, though, will the more hair-shirted style of low-carbon buildings: composting toilets or buildings made from “straw bales and mushrooms”. Waugh calls it “the architecture of Asterix and Obelix”. It’s a way of working that he says “has really held us back”.
So has a regulatory environment that has made it impossibly difficult to build in timber. Elsewhere in Europe, mass timber buildings are springing up like saplings; here, Waugh had to ask the Greater London Authority for permission to use wooden window frames. This, Waugh later told me, was “because of their crass, ill-informed, knee-jerk, pseudo-common sense politicised blanket ban”—this in the post-Grenfell era—“on timber in residential buildings”.
Seven Tory MPs have held the government’s housing brief since the last general election. The prospect of anyone spending a sustained period in the role, let alone overseeing legislative change is, in Waugh’s view, a “pipe dream”.
Waugh believes that, in 50 years or so, more new buildings “will be made in timber” and there will be “strict controls in place about demolishing anything”. It’s in that future—and in the present day, depending what building you’re in—that we can “really begin to celebrate some things in society we’ve forgotten and left behind, like humanity and comfiness, tactility and materials and how our buildings smell and sound”.
After our chat, I walk to the Black and White Building. If it’s a vision of the future, it’s a pleasing one.
