“For so long, a successful building has been a really tall one or a really big one. I sort of think that we need to change that attitude towards architecture and change that attitude towards development and we need to start celebrating the other things like, it’s the healthiest building to be in or the nicest one or the comfiest one or the kind of like, you know, people like coming there the most or you know, we need to start really reframing those notions of success in architecture and construction, I think.”
Susan Freeman
Hi, I’m Susan Freeman. Welcome back to our PropertyShe podcast series brought to you by Mishcon de Reya in association with the London Real Estate Forum, where I get to interview some of the key influencers in the world of real estate and the built environment. Today, I am delighted to welcome architect and timber evangelist, Andrew Waugh. Andrew is a founding director of Waugh Thistleton Architects, a practice dedicated to delivering beautiful buildings and places that acknowledge their effect on the environment. He is a world-renowned spokesperson for low impact architecture and innovative construction and lobbies and lectures internationally, communicating the urgent need for change to mitigate the climate crisis. A pivotal player in the global shift towards renewable bio-based materials, Andrew’s innovative approach to design has been acknowledged by many awards, including the RIBA President’s Award for Research and a Stirling Prize nomination in 2018. The practice is currently engaged on both research and design projects throughout Europe and North America. So now we are going to hear from Andrew Waugh about his approach to designing low carbon buildings and why mass timber is his preferred method of construction. Andrew, good morning.
Andrew Waugh
Hi.
Susan Freeman
So, I know you travel a lot and I think you’ve only just landed from a whirlwind visit to the States.
Andrew Waugh
Yes, that’s right. Seattle, Salt Lake City and Pittsburgh.
Susan Freeman
Wow. So, we’ll discuss airmiles a little later in the conversation. So, anyway, we are delighted you are now back in London. So, let’s just kick off with what made you choose architecture as a career in the first place?
Andrew Waugh
You know, I was one of those kind of Lego obsessive children, I suppose and I just, it has been something that I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember. So, I was, you know, still playing Lego, embarrassingly, when I was like sixteen or seventeen.
Susan Freeman
Andrew, I’ve got news for you, I think you’re still playing Lego, looking at the way The Black & White Building fits together, that’s what the construction looks like so, this explains a lot.
Andrew Waugh
It’s true, you know I’ve always, I’ve always found making things, making models, a lot more of a kind of immediate response to an architectural problem than sketching. I’ve always been much more of a model maker than a sketcher.
Susan Freeman
It’s interesting. So, you founded your practice shortly after college, I think, and when you started the practice, what was the ethos? Was it always about sustainability?
Andrew Waugh
It was about sustaining me and my business partner more than anything else. I mean, we were, you know we were pretty young, we were straight out of college, we were designing bars and restaurants and roof extensions and kitchen extensions and that kind of thing and for many years, it was just really learning about how to build things, about how to communicate with clients and with engineers. So, for many years it was really, we were kind of, we were fairly ethos light for many years.
Susan Freeman
What changed that? What converted you?
Andrew Waugh
I think a few things really. There was a change in planning law, you know, when eco homes came in, in the late ‘90s, early 2000s and this seemed to become the responsibility of architects of, you know, of the industry really but especially of architects, in early planning terms to begin to look at what the opportunities were for the building to have perhaps renewable energy or to reduce its operational carbon but at the same time it did appear to me that this sort of checklist way of, you know, designing a solution to the climate crisis, seemed really a bit ridiculous, the idea that actually, you didn’t need a solar panel if your building was near a bus stop and that kind of thing, it was really kind of. So, we just started getting more and more interested in that kind of thing, feeling, you know more and more that it was our responsibility to begin to look at these things and honestly, once you kind of, you know once you open that Pandora’s box and you have a good look inside and you realise what the implications are of architecture and of construction, then I think, for us at least, it was something that, that really began to shape our practice.
Susan Freeman
And you built Murray Grove in Hackney, I think in 2009, and that was the world’s first all timber residential tower. Is that right?
Andrew Waugh
Yes, it was. I mean, we kind of, you know, we worked very closely with a great engineer and a great timber manufacturer, Matthew Wells from Techniker and KLH and it was a real collaboration. We built our first TLT building in 2003 and then we built a couple more small kind of extensions, single family houses, that kind of thing but as we were doing that, it was sort of emerging as an idea that this material could be the viable replacement for concrete and steel and that we could vastly reduce the amount of carbon that was created by building buildings by the materials that make buildings. And so we had this notion of this building and then this project came along, Murray Grove, and we had a really positive relationship with the developer and with the contractor and they was just really, it was just one of those kind of perfect storms where the right people were in the right place to make something like that happen. But it was quite, you know there weren’t really any other buildings of any height made with this material, so it was really breaking new ground.
Susan Freeman
Very brave and I think even more so because I think you’ve said that the owner actually didn’t want anybody to know that it was made from wood and was concerned, was concerned that that might be regarded as a negative.
Andrew Waugh
I think that was true. I mean they were quite, it’s funny, they were, it was a sort of, I think they were quite excited by the innovation, they were quite intrigued by the innovation but at the same time, they were worried that nobody would buy it because it was made of wood. So, it was very, very much on the condition that we weren’t to tell anybody that it was made of timber and it was all covered in plasterboard for fire protection so, you know, if you live there, you wouldn’t necessarily know, although we now know that everybody that lives there, knows exactly what it’s made of an are very proud of the sustainability of the credentials of the building.
Susan Freeman
And did commissions then start flooding in or was it…?
Andrew Waugh
I wish. No. The questions started flooding in and kind of like lots of interest and lots of, you know, and lots of intrigue about what we’d done, why we’d done it and that was really valuable in itself because I think that, you know, what we were asked to do was to go to places and talk about the building and that gave us quite a rare opportunity to really think about why we’d done what we’d done. You know, to really, to really consider it and to kind of stand up in front of people for an hour and talk about why you’ve done certain things, you do that a few times and you know you really begin to have the opportunity to process those thoughts, you know to kind of to think about what you’re doing and what you wanted to do in the future and so, the level of interest we had in that building, I think drove our ambition, you know for what the practice has now become. So, it’s very formative.
Susan Freeman
So, you are very well known for, now, for using mass timber construction to reduce embodied carbon and I think one of your concerns is that people are still talking about operational carbon rather than embodied carbon. So, just, you know for our listeners, would you like just talk a little bit about your thinking on that and why we need to sort of change our focus so that we are thinking more about embodied carbon.
Andrew Waugh
Yes, certainly. So, in the ‘70s we really began to think about how much energy our buildings were using and began to think about how we could increase the insulation, we put in double-glazing, you know how we could make these buildings perform better so that they required less energy to heat them, to light them, cool them and we got pretty good at that and we really reduced operational carbon in our buildings dramatically in new buildings, dramatically. And my concern now is that lots of the certification systems that we have that lead the BREEAM, what they do is they encourage people to put in an awful lot of kit, an awful lot of stuff, complex building management systems, in order for really quite minimal gains and so we’ve got ourselves into this situation, which is a very kind of 20th Century situation, you know, it’s a sort of if you are in trouble, just keep digging, you know we are only in a climate crisis that’s driven by kind of human greed and what is our solution to it, is more stuff and actually I think that we probably need to change our expectations of buildings so that they’re not constantly cool or constantly very warm, we need to, you know, put a sweater on or take our jacket off in the summer and so, over the years, as we’ve got better at producing operational carbon, the carbon that now is the majority of carbon for a building’s lifetime, you know of sixty years, the majority of that carbon is the carbon that is expended by the production of the building materials and the process of construction but we’re not looking at that at all.
Susan Freeman
So, are there no certifications yet for reduced embodied carbon?
Andrew Waugh
BREEAM has a sort of nod to it but it’s not, it’s not very explicit, it’s not a core principle of BREEAM and for planning, the GLA has a sort of ‘oh can you count it for us, please’ but there’s no implications of that. So, really, we’re very legislation light on what is a major, you know, a major cause of carbon emissions in the world so, construction and building materials, about 14/15% now of global emissions and it’s growing, you know every other industry, apart from the obvious few, every other industry is doing their very best to drive emissions down and yet construction is not and we’re not being legislated to do that, which is very frustrating.
Susan Freeman
And it’s possible because it’s difficult, I mean I saw a stat recently that 60% of landfill is taken up with building rubble and I think we tend not to think about, you know, what happens if we demolish a building, you know, where does all that cement and concrete go to.
Andrew Waugh
Absolutely, and you know it’s the massive amount of landfill from buildings that we build that are not adaptable so, you know, are hard to, are hard to kind of maintain or keep up-to-date, it’s the incredible amount of plastics that are used in modern construction, all of these things, you know the extractive processes of so many of the materials that we’re using, there’s steel, the aluminium, you know, all the, the cement, the sand, the aggregates, all these things that are going into buildings which can’t be ever put back.
Susan Freeman
And how do you choose your projects or clients or do they choose you? And are there any developers who are really leading the way on low carbon development?
Andrew Waugh
I think that there’s, to be fair to the development world, I think there’s an incredible amount of interest. There’s an understanding of the, you know, of the obligation to change, to transform, there’s an understanding and an ambition that, you know, we need to do these things differently but I think that there’s a kind of a concern that there’s an inherent risk in innovation that the whole process of construction and development carries with it enough risk, well like why go the extra step? But I think when you get people like Charlie Green from The Office Group, you know, we’ve just finished a building for The Black & White Building for, you know that kind of sense of conviction that Charlie has, I mean he had it in the first place to, you know, to start The Office Group, which was you know a completely new way of doing things. That sense of conviction that Charlie has I think is what you really need in order to be able to promote these buildings, in order to be able to develop these sorts of buildings and so, for us, honestly, projects come to us generally because if we go looking for them, we never have any luck so…
Susan Freeman
Well, I’m pleased you mentioned The Black & White Building because obviously that’s where we, where we met at the recent Property Week event and it’s a stunning building and is it right it’s the first multistorey timber office to be built in the City since the 17th Century, which I read somewhere? But it’s clearly a real advance for low carbon development and I wondered how it came about because it’s The Office Group’s first development from scratch. How did you get to talk about constructing a multistorey office building in timber?
Andrew Waugh
It’s part of a long conversation that Charlie and I have been having. So, I’ve always been a great admirer of The Office Group, I see them as probably one of the most sustainable developers in the UK because they very rarely build anything, you know, and that is the most sustainable thing to do, that is the most sustainable approach. So they take buildings that are empty and unloved and they revitalise, they regenerate, they cherish those buildings and, you know, where others would have demolished them, they maintain them, they might extend them but, you know, but by keeping them, by locking the carbon that’s already in those buildings into building and have not expended more carbon by building new buildings, they really are the most sustainable developers. And I think a great lesson to us all, you know that when people, you know, that existing buildings thinking ‘oh my goodness, what on earth can I do with that 1970’s eyesore’, you know I think The Office Group are a pretty good inspiration for that and so I’ve always been quite a fan and have said to Charlie over many years, you know, this is great but should you happen to want a new building, we’d love to do that and so, brilliantly, when this opportunity arose, Charlie got in touch and, you know, it is a brave building because, as you say Susan, it’s the kind of you know it’s the first building of its type in central London but it’s not, it’s quite a modest building, you know, it’s six storeys tall, it’s 50,000 square feet but it is, it does demonstrate that it can be done, you know, it is built, it has got all its approvals, it’s got all of its insurance, it’s you know, it’s fully occupied and people really seem to quite like it, so that’s, you know, it’s completely viable, this way of building, this kind of architecture is not only possible but it’s actually quite perfect, I think. Well ours, quite perfect, you know, but sorry, that’s really arrogant. No but the process of it.
Susan Freeman
And is it all made of wood?
Andrew Waugh
Yes. From the ground floor slab up, everything is made of wood. So, the entire structure, the beams, column, floor slabs, lift cores, stairs, everything.
Susan Freeman
So the foundations are concrete?
Andrew Waugh
The foundations are concrete. There is a concrete basement in the building, yeah. And that’s actually, you know, about half the carbon is below the ground.
Susan Freeman
And we were talking about Lego and when you, when you spoke to us at Black & White Building about the way the building was constructed, I mean it just did sound as if it was very different from a normal construction site that you are really assembling the parts that are put together off site so, I think it would be really useful to hear, you know, how construction changes when you have an all timber building.
Andrew Waugh
Yeah, it’s a very precise process. It’s, I mean I love it, it’s so exciting but on this building, on Charlie’s building, we’ve got 872 pieces of timber. Each one of them arrives with a barcode on the back so you can identify exactly where it goes and so you have this very kind of measured, precise process and in fact we had six people build the entire structure of the building above ground, fourteen weeks, so four and a half thousand odd square metres in fourteen weeks. So it’s very fast and it’s very quiet and because it’s an assembly, it’s not a construction, it’s more of an assembly of pieces, like a model making kit if you like. We have no site waste, so nothing going to landfill in the process, very, you know, vast reduction in debris on site, so it’s quiet and it’s clean but it’s also kind of healthy as well and natural, you know you walk around a construction site and it sort of smells pine fresh and there’s nothing that’s hard or there’s nothing that’s toxic or you know so you get a really different atmosphere on the construction site as well.
Susan Freeman
So, for developers, actually be able to construct more quickly is a definite plus and then you’ve used I think cross-laminated timber and I mean from your point of view, what is the advantage of using timber over the more traditional methods of construction?
Andrew Waugh
Well there are a few, I mean beyond the immediate sustainability, so beyond the fact that you know brilliantly, trees suck in carbon dioxide, retain the carbon in the tree and release oxygen, so you have this kind of carbon store in the material, so not only is it much less, does it take much less energy to produce the material, the material that you have is in fact a carbon store. So immediately there’s that and then you have a material that’s incredibly strong for its weight, so very light, our buildings weigh about a third of a concrete building and it’s also very easy to work with, so you can cut it very precisely. Cross-laminated timber is produced in slabs of around 30 metres by three metres and then you cut those slabs down, you put them on the back of you know windows and doors or roof profiles, you put them on the back of a truck, you take them to site, you lift them into place and you screw them together with a cordless screwdriver. So they’re very fast, they’re very quiet, clean, as I was saying before and then they create this architecture, they create these buildings that have those kind of – somebody wrote me an email this morning saying it was ‘an intangible beauty’ which I really liked about it, something about being in a natural space and I think, Susan, we were talking about this on site as well, there’s something about being in this space where you are surrounded by natural materials, where you can really quite easily understand how the building goes together, you know you can see where the junctions are, you can see where the screws are put in, you feel as though you’re inside something that has been quite carefully, quite precisely constructed around you and there’s something I think very calming about that, being in such a natural environment. We try and use as transparent glass as we possibly can, so that you really get the natural benefits of the material, you pick up on the external daylight, you can understand what season it is, what the weather’s like outside, what time of day it is, which again is very good for you. You know, it’s a combination of different things but certainly the timber is primary in that.
Susan Freeman
And it it’s lighter as a material, is wind a problem as you build higher up with timber?
Andrew Waugh
Absolutely. So, because, exactly as you say Susan because the building is light, the structure that holds the building up is relatively slim but what you need to worry about is what we call racking or the sheer forces, the horizontal forces if you like against the building because it’s so light. So, we overcome that by understanding how the material could work. So on The Black & White Building for instance, we have the frame, the timber frame of the building and then rather than sitting the floor slabs on top of the beams, we sit the floor slabs within the beams, so they lock that frame tight, you know, and where we put the core in the building, the placement of the core, I mean everything is designed, the engineering of the building is central to the architecture of the building. So it really is a building that you are designing from the inside out.
Susan Freeman
And what do you see as the sort of limit in terms of height because I see something’s just gone up in Wisconsin which is 25 storeys and so the towers seem to be getting higher and higher.
Andrew Waugh
Yeah, I’m not a fan, I have to say. I think that, let’s wind it back a little bit, I think if the first question is about sustainability, the reason why we’re doing this is to reduce carbon in buildings, to you know have a more responsible approach to construction you know with regard to the climate crisis and tall buildings are not inherently sustainable, you know you can’t really open a window over fifteen storeys, you have to have additional lifts, additional staircases, lots of services going up the building, you’re structure gets very massive and that’s the same for timber buildings as it is for concrete buildings. So, actually, whether or not you can build very tall in timber I think is kind of mute because you probably shouldn’t be building tall anyway, in anything. So, we haven’t done any tall projects, we have, the tallest building that we have the moment is fourteen storeys and I’m kind of happy with that as a sort of you know, as a responsible level. I also think that we probably as an industry need to know a lot more about the material, how it acts, how we, you know, we need increasing amounts of research in terms of fire and moisture and that kind of thing. You know this is a brand new material, it’s not like we just take out the concrete and steel and we put in timber, you know people have called this the concrete of the 21st Century, that’s really not the case, this is a brand new way of building things, this is a paradigm shift if you like in terms of how you approach architecture, engineering, construction, it’s also I think a reframing of how we see success in architecture. You know, for so long, a successful building has been a really tall one or a really big one. I sort of think that we need to change that attitude towards architecture and change that attitude towards development and we need to start celebrating the other things like, it’s the healthiest building to be in or the nicest one or the comfiest one or the kind of like you know, people like coming there the most or, you know, we need to start really reframing those notions of success in architecture and construction, I think.
Susan Freeman
It’s interesting that you refer to it as a brand new material because of course it’s also seen as the old, you know the traditional way of building and I think one of the problems is perception, which may well be unfounded but certainly in London, you know we think back to the Great Fire of London in 1666 and you know we all learnt that houses were made of timber and burnt down and after that, we built in brick so, there is definitely a perception problem to deal with.
Andrew Waugh
I mean thankfully we have a Fire Brigade now, we didn’t have a Fire Brigade. So that’s a major advance.
Susan Freeman
That’s reassuring. Okay.
Andrew Waugh
Exactly. And you know, and you’re absolutely right, you know for thousands of years timber was the primary construction material, timber and stone, primary construction materials you know across the world and only in the last hundred years have we been building in concrete and steel to such a degree but I think that this material that we’re working with, engineered timber, is very different from timber frame, from the kind of traditional timber frame, it’s very different because it is a material that is engineered, that is manufactured with a very clear understanding of its structural capacity, it is a material that is prefabricated to precise dimensions. So, although you have this kind of beautiful, natural, healthy material, actually the process that goes into the design, the manufacture, the assembly of this material, is incredibly precise, is incredibly sophisticated and it couldn’t be done without the IT systems that we have in place to do that. So, I love that kind of balance of the sort of the natural and the kind of sophisticated because I guess it makes me feel that you know that we have made some progress that you know, that we can actually sort of work our way out of this rather than kind of going backwards.
Susan Freeman
Yes, so I think that’s important to understand and I know the developers I speak to who are trying to use timber have encountered problems with insurance and with the London Fire Brigade, I mean how do you overcome these problems because I know it’s something you’ve talked about at the presentation at The Black & White Building.
Andrew Waugh
Collaboration really, not to put too fine a point on it. It’s about early engagement, so it’s about talking to people really early doors, so engaging with the insurers, like at stage two, stage three of the development, not sort of finishing a building and then going out for insurance but actually working with the insurance brokers and until about five years ago, I had never met an insurance broker and when I did meet my first insurance broker, it was sort of like, I don’t think they’d met many architects before, they hadn’t met many kind of design professionals, engineers or anything, it had been sort of something that was handled by the developer quite exclusively and I think there’s a lot of those sort of barriers that we needed to break down, it’s the same as the relationship of architects to engineers. For many years, I think architects have been sort of drawing things, handing them to the engineer and the engineer sort of taking the sort of problem-solving attitude. You know the engineer that we worked with on The Black & White Building, Eckersley O’Callaghan, we sat with them for the very get-go of that design, working with them, you know, so it was a real collaboration and so I think that that collaboration with everybody involved, the approved inspectors, the London Fire Brigade, fire engineers, structural engineers, you know it has, it’s a full orchestra that makes this, makes this piece of music. Oh that sounds waxing, that’s really…
Susan Freeman
And what is it that the insurers and the Fire Brigade are concerned about because I initially thought it must be fire but it sounds as if water is more of an issue for them.
Andrew Waugh
I think for the insurers, water is more of an issue. They’re more worried about long-term water penetration in buildings, you know flooding bathrooms, leaking pipes, that kind of thing, holes in the roof. So, we work with them to work through these issues, to kind of like to try and allay these fears and lots of it really, Susan, is around competency and I kind of get that. You know, when I first met them, I was really frustrated and was kind of like, wanted to say you know this is a really super safe, we’ve got loads of research on this, demonstrated really clearly that this is incredibly strong, robust, safe material but the more that we’ve worked in it over the last years, the more we understand that actually it is quite a different way of building and quite a different way of designing and lots of the old ways of doing things don’t work as well, you know it’s not as suited to design and build contracts because most contractors, well lots of main contractors, haven’t done it before, so actually giving them the design responsibility isn’t necessarily the best idea. So it is that kind of, those ideas around competency, those ideas around kind of understanding what you are doing and not be siloed in your job but collaborating with the other design professionals, the other people involved, is incredibly important. And what we realised from insurers is just that actually, you know we did things like on The Black & White Building, we replaced all the CLT floor slabs in the bathrooms, we replaced those with plywood and joists, so much easier to adapt if there is a flood, they don’t get soaked to the same degree and you can perhaps see that kind of water kind of appearing in the ceiling below much more readily. So, it’s about listening for us as well, about listening to other people’s concerns, listening to the concerns of the Fire Brigade, of fire engineers and you know, and developers.
Susan Freeman
And so if there is a fire in a timber building and the Fire Brigade come along and, as they do, douse it down with water. Is that going to have a deleterious effect?
Andrew Waugh
I mean CLT can get wet, it can get wet as long as it’s allowed to dry. So, it depends on, you know, you have to detail these buildings carefully in order that, you know, if there is a kind of incident like that, that actually you know the floor has the opportunity to be able to evaporate. But it may be that you kind of, you know you lose small elements because of that but I think that you know one of the beauties of timber is that, unlike concrete and steel where, you know they’re very difficult to adapt, very difficult to cut little bits out, with timber you can really be quite surgical about it, you know my next-door-neighbour, so I live in a CLT building and three of us built it together and we live all next to each other and the first summer that I went away on holiday, my neighbour and his dad cut a bathroom window out with a chainsaw. I mean, we didn’t have planning so they had to put it back and I was furious, you know, but it’s so, it’s so feasible. We did a building for British Land a few years ago and put a new staircase into the building a few months after completion and it took ten days to put a six storey staircase in the building.
Susan Freeman
And of course when the building gets to the end of its useful life, you can dismantle it and reuse the timber.
Andrew Waugh
Absolutely. And that something that we consider quite carefully in the design process as well, as how the building can be demounted. So, we pay careful attention to how it can be taken back into pieces, can be disassembled.
Susan Freeman
And what do you think is the sort of natural life of a timber building? Or do we not know yet?
Andrew Waugh
Well, we’ve got some ideas because you know we’ve got a, I can’t remember now but it’s like a church in Essex, which has got exposed timber structure and it’s about 9th Century, so it’s the oldest timber church in Europe is in Essex, in Ongar. So, you know, timber, like every other material, just needs to be looked after, needs to be maintained and in fact, you know, we were very used to maintaining buildings as part of our society, as part of kind of like the life of a city was about maintaining these buildings. Only in recent times, if we had these buildings that just have to look brand new forever, you know that have to be shiny forever and ever, which I think is just such a kind of, such a bizarre notion, when actually everybody likes houses, you know we really like quite old houses and doing them up and repairing them and kind of like we celebrate the older buildings in our city but somehow can’t see that there would be an opportunity to celebrate buildings with some, you know that we’re building now that might have some patina in the future, that might have some kind of you know experience.
Susan Freeman
And that might change. So, we’ve obviously talked about The Black & White Building which his offices but in relation to building residential in timber, after Grenfell, new regulations were brought in that banned the use of combustible materials in external walls of buildings over a certain height and in London, you can’t use I think timber in the walls of any residential building so, how did that affect projects you were working on?
Andrew Waugh
Yeah, we kind of, we fell off a cliff really. You know, in terms of, I mean obviously you know lots of things that we need to improve in our industry that we now understand following the awful tragedy at Grenfell, we know that but it was a kind of knee jerk, political reaction, it wasn’t, you know the Hackitt report was really clear, the building regulations don’t need changing but just the way that they’re implemented needs changing. So what did the Government do, they changed the building regulations. You know, they exempted PVC windows but PVC windows were the first thing that melted, fell out and allowed the fire to spread at Grenfell. So, when we spoke to building regulations officials after the change, they were really apologetic and they said, ‘yeah, sorry, you know timber was a sort of collateral damage for clear regulation and we were told by the Government we had to get this done very quickly in order to meet the Grenfell anniversary’ and, you know it was all so really frustrating, really frustrating, really unnecessary kind of pseudo common sense, kneejerk type reaction so, yeah, really frustrating, especially when you see the rest of the world changing their building regulations, changing their planning law, promoting the use of timber, public procurement programmes in timber, in France 50% of all public buildings have to be made from timber you know, and there’s Government sponsored research into how to build safely and responsibly with the material. You know, only in the UK have we rolled back regulations against timber. Only in the UK do you get somebody like the GLA, who at one point says that you know they are climate champions and in another it’s kind of banning the only proven way to reduce carbon in construction. It’s absolutely ridiculous, so short-sighted. Very, you can hear, I am sure, from my voice, very frustrating.
Susan Freeman
No, and I mean is that likely to change?
Andrew Waugh
I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, I think that carbon taxes are an inevitability and as that happens, the price of concrete is going to go up, the price of steel is going to go up and then timber will become, you know, be seen as being a kind of viable, low cost material and when that happens, I imagine there will be increased pressure put on Government to change those kind of regulations. So, I don’t see it, unfortunately I don’t see it happening anytime soon but maybe a change in Government, you know maybe a change in Government will promote that kind of more outward looking rather than inward looking kind of notion, I don’t know.
Susan Freeman
So who is driving the demand for timber construction? I mean, is it funders, is it occupiers because clearly there is far more awareness now about embodied carbon and the need to reduce carbon. Who do you think will drive this forward?
Andrew Waugh
It’s really clear actually, at the moment, it really is the funders. It’s the investors that are driving this at the moment. To a degree, the consumers because we can see that you know, timber office buildings rent for more money. Quite simply, there’s a value advantage there. We can also see that in residential buildings, people are prepared to pay for sustainability, people want to be responsible, individuals want to make responsible choices and then there’s ESG and you know the environmental, social governance that some funds, some investment funds are aligned with, make demands on those investments to, to be more environmentally responsible. So, I think that that is really beginning to drive change so, what we hear from investors is, they can’t find the developers to invest in, they can’t find the developers who are, you know, producing the products that they want to invest in. So, you have this kind of bizarre situation now where there’s all this money out there wanting to invest in Green construction, in low carbon construction, and they can’t find the developers to do it. And we’re seeing this, not only in the UK but we’re seeing this across the US and in the EU as well and you know, in those places, the development market is really responding by building in timber. Only in the UK are we sort of, you know, shrugging our shoulders and sort of throwing our hands in the air.
Susan Freeman
And is there a Green premium yet? I mean is there any evidence of a higher value?
Andrew Waugh
Definitely. Definitely. I mean we hear it anecdotally that data, I think will begin to, to rise but I know that the data in Australia is really clear that the timber office buildings that they have in Australia rent at a premium and we hear the same about housing, recently hearing about housing in The Netherlands, in France the same, in the US there’s a definite premium for timber office buildings. So, I think that, you know this will come to the UK and that probably will drive change, which is bizarre you know because Susan, I think, you know if you’d asked me that question ten years ago, it all to my mind would have been legislation, you know it would have been low carbon legislation driving this kind of advance but actually, it’s not, it’s the money that’s seeking it out.
Susan Freeman
It does seem to be, it does seem to be that way because it certainly isn’t legislation. And you’re obviously working internationally but I saw you’re working with Lendlease in Milan’s Innovation District and I think that is also office or it’s certainly commercial use, isn’t it?
Andrew Waugh
Yeah, it’s two large offices.
Susan Freeman
I just wondered if there’s the same perception there that timber is in some way fragile, no?
Andrew Waugh
No, not at all. In fact, it’s a seismic zone so they have a kind of risk of earthquake so they know that actually timber buildings perform so much better in those circumstances because they’re not rigid and brittle like a concrete building, that they can flex, to move, so actually the attitude in Italy has been incredibly positive, both from sort of building regulations inspectors, local Government officials and the development market and agents, incredibly positive.
Susan Freeman
And you know we talked about the fact that you are, you know you’re travelling quite a lot for your international projects so, would you say you’re doing more sort of overseas at the moment than you are in the UK?
Andrew Waugh
Yeah, we are. Disappointingly. You know, it’s really exciting, I have to be honest with you, it’s really exciting the first few times in the first couple of years of doing it. Now, you know, not so much and it would be great to have more work in the UK but, but there we are and we, you know we’ve got some wonderful projects further afield and we’re learning, you know this is the other great thing that we’re kind of learning from other design professionals, other architects, other engineers in different countries, learning about different kind of construction procurement processes, different kind of ways of planning, so it’s been really, really interesting, it’s been an amazing education.
Susan Freeman
And is there evidence yet of, I mean we talk about the fact that there’s something wonderful about being in a timber building and you get, you know the smell and it’s all very natural but is there any evidence of the positive effects of living and working in a timber building?
Andrew Waugh
Yeah, there’s clear data to show now that people who are recovering in timber hospitals, get better faster. People who live in timber buildings, like me, sleep very well at night, that people that work in timber offices have lower heart rates, lower blood pressure, better concentration, they work longer hours, better productivity, more likely to stay with that employer. So, there are so many advantages like that, of that kind of health and wellbeing advantages or a timber building.
Susan Freeman
And if timber construction, not if, when timber construction takes off, how is the UK timber construction industry? I mean, do we actually have the wood to supply the construction industry?
Andrew Waugh
We have a lot of trees in the UK, we do have a lot of trees, not as many as some other countries in Europe but we burn most of our trees, you know, most of the trees that we cut down in the UK are used for biomass as a renewable energy, which is just appalling. So, we need to stop burning trees and we need to kind of, you know we need to manage our forest resource in a better way. So at the moment, everybody knows those kind of plantation forests, they’re like some kind of gothic nightmare where because the trees are all planted so close together, there’s no wildlife, there’s no birdsong. You know it’s really different when you go to Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, you go to those places, the forests are beautiful, they’re responsibly harvested, they’re not clear cut so you don’t walk out and see a whole swathe of cut down trees, they’re selectively cut, so these big kind of robots go in and pluck one tree out here and there and then five are planted in its place. So, it’s a much more responsible process of management of harvesting and we need to learn in the UK, you know we need to get better at these things because it’s not, it’s not as clear as you know concrete bad, timber good, timber is better but it can be even better than it is. So, we need to do so much better than we do it right now and for sure, forestry is one of those things and planting more trees. We need to plant more trees everywhere and especially in the UK.
Susan Freeman
And just moving onto a slightly different building material. I think the project that was nominated for the Stirling Prize wasn’t built out of timber, it was, is it rammed earth? Which is something I’ve not come across before and the project was the prayer halls at the Jewish Cemetery in Bushey, so I’m intrigued as to how that project came about and how you chose the material that you used.
Andrew Waugh
Bushey was the most amazing project to be involved in. I mean it was such a special commission, I felt so honoured to do that project. And then it was ten years, you know, from the very first phone call, which was, we’ve got some trouble with the planning authority, you know, I saw you in a planning committee meeting last week and you were, you know you did well in front of the planners, I was just wondering if you could come and have a chat with us about our planning issues that we’re having in Bushey. And so that’s how that project started and it, the original commission was really just to trial and unravel some of the planning issues and then building proposal and then lots of tea parties, lots of kind of like, lots of evenings in North London talking to people about what our vision for the building might be and what people’s ambitions for the building were, their expectations of the building and so we arrived at the building form relatively early but the rammed earth was something that would be spent some time looking at. It just needed to be, to my mind, something very simple or something very essential. I think that the Jewish process of burial is something that’s so well-honed over so many centuries, you know it’s such an emotional process, it’s such a cathartic one as well and I think that, you know something about the rammed earth being made from the earth around you, something about the fact that, you know, that you can see how it’s been made by people’s hands as it’s been built up in layers, was very kind of you know just felt very human to the kind of issue that you were kind of dealing with. You know, we stand there, when you go to a funeral, you stand there and you think about the person who’s just, that’s just passed away but you also think about your own mortality, I think, a lot, you know and you stand there and you stare at the building and so, I was very aware from the beginning about how the building materials, how each architectural decision would really resonate with the people that were standing there in these kind of emotional states and yeah, so it was a, yeah, incredible project to be involved in.
Susan Freeman
And were you surprised to be nominated for a project that didn’t primarily involve timber?
Andrew Waugh
Yeah. Of course. But you know but actually really pleased as well because I think that, as I said to you earlier, our primary interest as a practice is about how we can reduce carbon in construction, how we can produce, you know a relevant and beautiful architecture for you know for this age and we find that usually to be in timber but in this situation, timber wasn’t the relevant material. There aren’t other, many technologies around there that can viably replace concrete and steel, I don’t think we’re going to solve the urban housing crisis with mushrooms and straw, you know it’s not going to happen, we need a material that is manufactured at scale to do that, one that’s kind of you know engineered with sophistication etc., but for this public building, for this civic building, actually something different was needed and so rammed earth became a far more kind of, I think, relevant technology.
Susan Freeman
And have you used rammed earth anywhere else or was it just for this?
Andrew Waugh
No.
Susan Freeman
No, just for…
Andrew Waugh
Just for this once. I mean it was such a special building that it really did require or deserve that kind of one-off kind of special occasion, I think. We’ve looked at other opportunities for using it but nothing has come up yet. I’d love to do it again, I’d love to use it in the right place again.
Susan Freeman
Well it sounds as if that was absolutely the right place, I mean it’s all quite biblical, sort of very ashes to ashes, isn’t it.
Andrew Waugh
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Susan Freeman
So, what do you think needs to happen to get more developers comfortable with building in timber?
Andrew Waugh
Honestly, Susan? Opportunities like this, thank you. The opportunity to talk about it, opportunities to write about it and we’ve taken, I mean between Charlie and I, we must have taken about 500 people round the building, no exaggeration, I mean it’s been incredible but the level of interest that we’ve had in The Black & White Building, it’s been great, you know we seek out opportunities to talk about timber, to talk about our experience in working in timber, so I think it really is, I mean it’s quite evangelical in that sense that you have to kind of like you know go out and spread the word but also, we’re doing a few research projects now, one with a philanthropic fund called Built by Nature, part of the Laudes Foundation, we’re doing a research project with them and the insurance industry to look at how we can develop a kind of a system for building in CLT for residential buildings and we’re also working with Built by Nature and a number of developers, a number of big developers and REITs on a series of approved details and systems for commercial buildings. So lots of research as well.
Susan Freeman
And I understand that you also teach, I don’t know how you find time for it but you are also spreading the word through your teaching.
Andrew Waugh
I think that students, architecture students, engineering students, are really, you know they’re very much more aware of their responsibility in terms of climate change, it’s something that they’re really, you know, really interested about and I think for us, you know Susan what underpins this is that this is a terrible kind of you know the climactic events that we’re about to face are terrible, it’s really quite daunting and I think that many of the solutions for the situation or many of the kind of solutions to mitigate the solution that we’re in, you know feel quite unpleasant, they feel about denial, about having less, doing less, flying less, but actually this architecture that we’re building, is actually I think an optimistic view of the future, you know it’s actually you know more harmonious with nature and with the planet, it’s producing buildings that are really wonderful to be in, that are a better experience than what was past but yeah, are responsible and I think that students get really excited about that because for a lot of them, the climate emergency is quite an aggressive kind of, you know quite an oppressed fact that surrounds them and so if they’re engaging with that, to engage with it in a positive way through building in timber, is a kind of, you know it’s something that gets them excited and motivated and so, so yeah, we do lots of teaching.
Susan Freeman
No, you raise an interesting point that for the younger generation, you know perhaps it’s seen as a more compelling issue than you know the older generation.
Andrew Waugh
For sure, for sure, I mean it’s a, you know they learn about it at school, you know from day one, I mean my daughters have you know been doing climate projects and learning about the climate emergency since they were in primary school and I think this is part of their understanding of life and the future in a much greater way than it has been of mine, or certainly, definitely of mine at that age. So, no, you know it’s the, it’s the younger generation that’s going to clear up the mess that we’ve left them, I fear. Well, they’ll have to.
Susan Freeman
Well, let’s hope so. So, Andrew, thank you very much. When is your next trip?
Andrew Waugh
Tomorrow.
Susan Freeman
Okay, okay. So, is this Denmark?
Andrew Waugh
It is Denmark, yeah.
Susan Freeman
Oh, so have you got projects there as well?
Andrew Waugh
We’re in conversation. I hope so.
Susan Freeman
Okay, alright. Well, please keep spreading the word and it’s been a real pleasure talking to you today. Thank you so much.
Andrew Waugh
Thank you very much, Susan. Speak soon. Bye-bye.
Susan Freeman
Thank you, Andrew. Having visited The Black & White Building and hearing you advocate for timber construction, I really hope we’ll see it more widely adopted in the UK. So, that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed today’s conversation. Please join us for the next PropertyShe podcast interview coming very soon.
The Propertyshe podcast is brought to you by Mishcon de Reya in association with the London Real Estate Forum and can be found at Mishcon.com/PropertyShe along with all our interviews and programme notes. The podcasts are also available to subscribe to on your Apple podcast app and on Spotify and whatever podcast app you use. Do continue to subscribe, leave positive reviews and let us have feedback and comments and most importantly, suggestions for future guests and of course you can continue to follow me on Twitter @Propertyshe and on LinkedIn for a very regular commentary on all things real estate, Prop Tech and the built environment. See you soon.