North Kent Countryside Gateway (Shorne Wood)

Kent, UK

Project outline

“An exemplar project of sustainable design reflecting influences and materials in the areas which it is built”.

Constructed from timber felled locally in the Kent and East Sussex area, Shorne Wood has a wind turbine and solar panels to generate energy, rainwater harvesting, a woodchip boiler for all heating and a range of other cutting-edge innovations. Live LCD displays show the energy and water being used and generated at any one time. Inside, displays describe the building and the unique Heritage Lottery Funded project to restore the historic and natural landscape in the Shorne area.

The structure of the Visitors’ Centre is special in its form and unique in its structural design.  Central to its development was the selection of a structural form.

Sweet Chestnut has inherently good structural properties. There are large acreages of Sweet Chestnut across the south eastern counties capable of coming onto the market, year after year, from scheduled coppice felling, thus providing a primary structural material at Shorne Wood invigorating the nascent sweet chestnut industry in Kent and adjoining East Sussex.

Available equipment to laminate the beams set an invariable limit on the shape of structural elements.  The beams could only be formed to lengths just slightly greater than 7m and with finite curvature.  Apart from straight beams, limited curved beams, with straight sided faces, were the only other achievable option.  Such a range of structural shapes and sizes was really too small for a timber building of a useable size.  The design was therefore advanced to frame the building with more beams to span the building than would be expected for a conventionally sourced structural timber, such as oak, redwood, whitewood or Scandinavian sourced glue laminated pine beams.  Across the relatively narrow building the framework was built up from four linked timber members.

Architecture draws on traditional Kentish styles. The curves of the 'S' shaped building, punctuated on the southern aspect with glazed roofing panels, promote natural ventilation and lighting. The internal structural beams, reminiscent of an upturned boat, are a modern twist on a traditional 'Kentish' cruck frame and are a contemporary solution to the problem of providing clear, internal volume.

On future dismantling of the Visitor’s Centre the concrete is of a quality that can taken up, crushed and reused for subsequent filling on another project.

Contract value

£1,400,000

Key features

• Sweet chestnut timber used as structural elements both natural trunks and laminated beams
• Show cases best practice in sustainable design
• Eco features include the use of wind and solar power, recycled rainwater and bio-mass heating.
• Part Heritage Lottery Funded
• Dedicated programme at the Building Research Establishment to test sample beams and scissor joints since formal design guidance did not exist
• Unique structural design
• Project was short listed for the 2007 IstructE David Alsop Sustainability Award.  For further information please click here.

Appointment

• Building Services
• Programme Project Management
• Structures