Living material
You’ll be amazed what wood can do
As soon as the first men bravely moved out of their protective
caves, they surely built protective structures out of wood. The ultimate
renewable resource for architecture is thus the oldest, but also the
most modern of materials. Thanks to computer-driven design and
manufacturing techniques, wood can be cut and carved in the most
astonishing new ways. Such innovative contributors to the work published
in this volume as the German professor Achim Menges are showing the way
to the creation of complex, almost living wood structures. Others like
the young architects from WMR who are based in Santiago, Chile, show
just how it is possible to build a dramatic two-story wood cabin
overlooking the Pacific for just $ 30,000. Or imagine how an innovative
polyurethane-coated wood canopy can cover and renew a whole area of the
historic city of Seville (Metropol Parasol by Jürgen Mayer H.).
Just as it can be simple and evocative, wood can be part of
sophisticated structures like Snohetta’s Norwegian Wild Reindeer
Pavilion, with its CNC-milled timber wall. Economical, ecological, and
fundamentally warm, wood architecture is as contemporary as it gets.
The author:
Philip Jodidio (born 1954) studied art history and economics at Harvard, and edited
Connaissance des Arts for over 20 years. His books include TASCHEN’s
Architecture Now! series,
and monographs on Tadao Ando, Norman Foster, Richard Meier, Jean
Nouvel, and Zaha Hadid. He is internationally renowned as one of the
most popular writers on the subject of architecture.
