A ‘Greening Machine’ Made from Red Oak

AHEC, a trade association for the American hardwood industry, is no stranger to the London Design Festival, having installed ambitious and innovative timber structures as part of it for years. These include The Smile, Alison Brooks Architects' aptly named walk-in sculpture in 2016, and MultiPly, designed by Waugh Thistleton Architects in 2018 and built from prefabricated tulipwood. The latest is Vert, a collaboration between AHEC, industrial designer Stefan Diez, and the urban greening specialists at OMCºC. As in previous AHEC installations at the festival, Vert explores the potential of engineered hardwood in form, function, and sustainability, creating what Diez calls a “Greening Machine” that strives to make urban spaces more harmonious and pleasant.

Made from red oak glulam (glue-laminated timber), Vert consists of triangular structures suspending biodegradable nets that are the framework for climbing plants rooted in textile planters. Also suspended are mesh benches positioned in the shade of the “sails” greened by around twenty species of plants. In addition to providing a cooling space for festival visitors, the installation purports to be “a living ecosystem that enriches local biodiversity [and] serves as a habitat for essential insect populations.” A statement from AHEC further describes that, “in an era of acute climate change, climbing plants can be more effective [at reducing carbon] as they grow many times faster [that trees], require less root space, and can be ‘harvested’ annually to be turned into biochar or recycled as raw material for the generation of energy.”

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 shape of the structure. The triangular form minimizes materials, withstands lateral forces, and is able to accomodate 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.”

Red oak was selected for a number of reasons. The trees make up nearly twenty percent of hardwood forests in North America. Red oak is denser and more stable than standard construction woods, such as spruce or pine. When engineered as glulam, by finger jointing and laminating multiple grain-aligned layers, the wood's strength and stability allow for large structural components, like the ones that make up Vert.

Vert is on display at the Parade Ground of Chelsea College of Arts during the London Design Festival, September 14–22, and will remain on site until October 14.

Here are a few photographs of the manufacturing of the red oak timber beams at neue Holzbau, a Swiss company known for engineering and manufacturing complex timber structures, often in hardwood: