Timber in retail construction

Timber makes a coffee mate

Savvy retailers are learning that wood has a winning aesthetic for today’s more eco-conscious consumers, and given its innate sustainable credentials it means retail therapy doesn’t have to be quite such a guilty pleasure reports Mark Cantrell

This feature first appeared in the Summer 2015 print edition of Timber in Construction

FANCY a coffee? No, of course you don’t – you’re here for the timber. But there’s a place just opened in Wrekin where you can imbibe a caffeine hit and check out some innovative timber engineering while you’re at it. Okay, you can have a cup of tea if you really must.

Anyway, cafe chain Costa, part of the Whitbread retail empire, has opened its first so-called ‘Eco Pod’ store at Wrekin Retail Park, near Telford in Shropshire. It’s a regular coffee shop as far as the retail side goes, but from a design and construction perspective, it features the kinds of innovations and energy saving technologies intended to make it a ‘zero energy’ building.

Obviously, it’s not going to be completely ‘zero’ energy – nobody wants cold coffee, right? – but passive ventilation and those construction techniques are supposed to greatly reduce the energy required for space heating and cooling. This energy requirement, so we are told, will be covered by solar photovoltaic cells embedded in the specially curved roof.

The retail park is owned by a company called Hammerson. In fact, it owns the carbon neutral Eco Pod too and leases it to Costa, but the two companies worked together to explore and develop the concept.

“This is an exciting first for coffee shop and retail design here in the UK and has the potential to transform not just how we build new stores at Costa, but the industry far more widely,” said Jim Slater, managing director of Costa UK & Ireland.

“We wanted to explore new ways to serve quality coffee to our customers while managing our environmental footprint as responsibly as we can. Through a successful partnership with Hammerson, we have developed an outstanding new type of test bed building design which really does have the potential to make a massive difference if rolled out more widely.”

Key design features include:

• A glulam timber frame constructed using FSC-sourced timber as an alternative to traditional steel frame, reducing the building’s embodied carbon footprint
• A super-insulated facade using softwood said to have excellent energy retention properties. As such, it keeps more heat in during the winter but helps keep the inside cool during the summer
• “Intelligent” orientation of the building so that it achieves optimum levels of sun and shade, which impacts on the overall energy requirements for heating and cooling
• An underfloor heating system and passive ventilation

Hammerson and Costa called in architects Emission Zero, which specialise in low carbon design, while the project was managed by Projex Building Solutions. The glulam frames were designed and made by Fordingbridge.

“The development is pioneering for retail units of this type owing to the ‘zero energy’ design and collaborative working of the supply chain to develop the project from desk top theory into reality,” said Projex. “The design principles drive a zero energy building, whereby the running costs are set off by the energy savings generated by sustainable solutions such as thermal mass heating and cooling, passive ventilation, and photovoltaic energy storage.

“By embracing the supply chain from desk top feasibility as opposed to the more conventional post-contract design and build introduction, we have generated a sustainable building with zero energy performance and understated aesthetic appeal with the potential to become market leading.”

Tom Cochrane, Hammerson’s asset manager said: “The opening of the Costa Eco Pod is a significant achievement for our team and clearly demonstrates that as a business Hammerson is at the forefront of consumer awareness of supply chain ethics and environmental impacts. By working collaboratively, we have been able to provide Costa with an entirely new and innovative concept store, as well as a UK first. Using this blueprint for low-carbon sustainable design we hope to support, where possible, other retailers in creating truly sustainable assets.”

Clearly, the partners are proud of their eco-baby and have every confidence in its capabilities. Provisionally, the Eco Pod has been given an Energy Performance Certificate rating of A+. But there’s a while to go before the building proves the eco-hype in practice; it opened early April and the plan is to monitor its performance over the next six to 12 months. The proof of the muffin is in the eating, after all.

Costa might have scored itself a PR coup with its eye-catching coffee shop, but it’s not the only retailer that is looking to make the most of timber as a natural-born building material. And there are plenty of reasons why, from the aesthetics of wood, through its structural capabilities, all the way to its environmental credentials as a means to lock away carbon emissions in the built environment.

“Wood as a building material is unique and flexible,” said Ellen Jones, architect at Bedford-based Woods Hardwick. “It has inherent aesthetic, textural and sensual qualities, and as a result can be utilised within buildings for structural purposes right through to decorative finishes. Through managed and sustainable sources we have plentiful, cost-effective and ecologically sound supply, which is preferable from historically damaging alternatives.”

The advantages of timber are many, said Jones; namely:

• The UK is a world leader in advanced engineered timber construction. Timber engineering, including SIPS, has the advantage of being manufactured off-site. Light enough to provide fast on-site assembly, it reduces build times and costs dramatically
• Buildings using timber are more textural and tactile than traditional steel-framed constructions. In Jones’s view they “feel softer and more relaxed” than steel and will therefore provide a different experience visually as well as spatially
• Timber engineered frame solutions offer “excellent” thermal, fire and acoustic properties and are able to “better resist” environmental influences and chemicals compared to structures using alternative materials
• By-products from the timber manufacturing process can be fully recycled
• Wood products such as glulam and cross-laminated timber provide “infinite” design possibilities without compromising on structural design. By being cost-effective and an “excellent ecological building material”, Jones said Woods Hardwick is able to provide its commercial clients with innovative designs that satisfy both cost requirements and environmental standards

“Looking to the future and the increasing requirements on carbon reduction to satisfy even the most basic requirements, we feel timber will have an increasing role in reaching this conjunction with low-carbon technologies. At Woods Hardwick we will continue to advocate the use of wood in our designs and communicate the many benefits it provides,” Jones added.

In Corby, Northamptonshire, the firm has applied its thinking on behalf of Tesco with the design and construction of a new so-called Eco Store and an associated petrol station. The latter inevitably invites a raised eyebrow, motorists’ collected carbon emissions considered, but the stores themselves have been constructed to minimise their impact on the environment.

The new Tesco Eco Store provides 82,565 sq ft of sales space and occupies a 7.8 hectare former brownfield site that was a leftover relic of the town’s steel working industry. This made it a challenging project, by all accounts, but in its landscaped setting, wrapped in an ‘ecology zone’, the new store was built to establish a striking presence. The single-storey supermarket is clad in a combination of curtain walling and timber structural insulated panels (SIPs) faced in a larch outer rainscreen. It has achieved a BREAAM ‘Very Good’ rating.

“This was a challenging and exacting brief to work on,” said Jones, who was lead architect on the Corby project. “Our response was driven by the complexity of the site’s heritage and the context that what was principally an out of town development was to be treated and viewed as an in-town development.”

Woods Hardwick is working to deliver another Tesco Eco Store, this one in Newmarket, Suffolk, but it is hoped to follow in the – reduced – carbon footprint of its Corby sibling and achieve BREAAM ‘Very Good’. Again, it’s a brownfield site but on this occasion it is replacing an earlier Tesco store that was opened in the 1980s.

Like its Corby counterpart, the Newmarket Eco Store resides in a landscaped setting and has an associated filling station, although this one – a single food store – is smaller at 70,000 sq ft. It will be clad in a combination of glazed curtain walling to the front elevation and timber cassette panels faced in a larch outer rainscreen to the side elevations. Inside the store, the engineered timber frame is to be left exposed. The idea is to link the “strong visual aesthetic of timber inside and out”. The frame also reduces the building’s embedded carbon by 20-25%.

The fabric complements the energy efficiency elements incorporated into the buildings: a combined heat and power unit, a draught lobby intended to reduce heat loss, rainwater harvesting, improved service metering and CO2 refrigeration to reduce carbon emissions. The store will also make use of a mixed mode ventilation scheme, making use of roof-mounted windcatchers. It will also feature large rooflights to allow natural daylight onto the sales floor. These will supplement artificial lighting and also, it is claimed, prevent excess heat loss or gain. The shell is due to be completed in August with the fit-out completed at the end of this year.

Shopping, as retail firms know all too well, is about more than the cold mechanics of assembling the building and kitting it out; it has to appeal at an almost subliminal level, creating an alluring welcoming presence, that is as much marketing art and psychology as it is science and engineering.

Wood, with its natural, almost homely aesthetic, is clearly a winning material in the retail war to win consumer hearts and minds. That it also evokes the environment and green living in this carbon conscious era is clearly the icing on the cake.


This article first appeared in the Summer 2015 print edition of Timber in Construction magazine. It was subsequently published on the Timber in Construction website, 29 June 2015

Cover Story: Election blues, Cameron takes the house

Cameron’s “sweetest victory” has a bitter taste for housing

The unexpected election of a full-blooded Conservative Government has sent the housing world into some disarray, but as it contemplates its fortunes under this new regime, it may find some of its gravest threats invigorate its greatest strengths

By Mark Cantrell

First published in the June/July print edition of Housing magazine

REVENGE may be a dish best served cold, but if there’s any consolation for the housing world – still reeling from the shock ‘Tory Spring’ that returned a majority Conservative Government – it’s that David Cameron has bigger fish to fry.

In any case, when it comes to dishing out payback for the housing world’s ‘disloyalty’ prior to the election, Cameron may already feel a sense of ‘vengeance is mine’ with his proposal to extend Right-to-Buy to housing associations. Even if the policy doesn’t make it onto the statute books, resisting it will serve to harass and distract an already embattled sector.

A slap in the face, followed by a dismissal, isn’t much to show for months of hard campaigning and years of lobbying for a resolution to the housing crisis. For now, at least, it seems evident that the new Government can dismiss the housing world’s major players as a defeated foe.

The Prime Minister, meanwhile, no doubt haunted by the experiences of his predecessors – Margaret Thatcher, John Major, even Tony Blair – and the somewhat bruising end to their premierships is already looking ahead to his exit strategy. He has indicated he will not do a third term. If he holds to this purpose, he won’t be in office come the 2020 general election, so he can’t afford to hang about and gloat.

Obviously, the Conservative Party will want a new leader bedded in well before the next battle for Number 10 commences, which leaves Cameron a tight time-scale in which to secure his legacy. Inevitably, then, the next three years or so are critical to the way his political career will be remembered; he will be looking to make his mark on the history books – and on the country too – so he’s unlikely to be over-concerned with the housing question.

Cameron has set his sights on reforming Britain’s relationship with Europe; it’s a choice he may yet live to regret. The issue has long been a thorny one and it has bloodied the party before, just ask John Major. One wrong move and the Prime Minister may find his quest for a favourable legacy shredded by internal party strife – along with other elements of his legislative ambitions, lost in the fray as collateral damage.

Away from the European question, with a slender majority to contend with, this may not be the easiest Parliament for Cameron to steer. Rowdy backbenchers and a fractious right wing may become a particularly irksome source of opposition; a distraction at the very least. Quite what this will entail for his Government’s legislative programme is anybody’s guess right now. We’re still in that ‘pause for breath’ phase, as everyone takes stock, assesses their position, and braces for the resumption of the game.

In that regard, we find ourselves accommodating to the new normal, where the present is but an echo of the past, and where those who once urgently harangued the politicians to take the housing crisis seriously now pledge their vows of fealty to this unexpected Government. At least that’s how it feels.

“As always CIH now stands ready to work with the new government to use the knowledge and experience of housing professionals to inform the detail of policy design and implementation, so that the new housing policy framework moves us closer to, not further away from, creating a housing system that works for everyone,” said Gavin Smart, deputy chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH).

David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation (NHF) said: “We will offer the new government all the support we can in helping them to end the housing crisis... We look forward to working with the new government and the new ministerial team constructively and in partnership to support the task ahead.”

Given their day jobs, this is exactly the kind of thing both men need to be seen to be saying, whatever their private thoughts; it’s all part of the time-honoured ritual of regime changeover, but for all that, to the outsider listening in such words possess an inescapable air of supplication about them.

The trouble is they are pledging to work with a Government that has amply demonstrated it is inimical to housing associations’ business interests – not to mention their oft-quoted social purpose. It’s a reasonable question to ask, then, and one the wider housing world must ask itself in the coming weeks and months: is it really possible to seek accommodation with a Government patently indifferent to its circumstances and requirements? For some, this may smack more of surrender than standing firm.

In fairness, that’s reading a lot into a couple of routine responses, and both Smart and Orr said more in their initial reaction to the election result. They reiterated the case for action to resolve the housing crisis, they expressed opposition to proposed Tory policies – since confirmed in the Queen’s Speech – and they pushed the case for change. But the statements felt listless, it must be said, as if the spokespersons are tired of covering the same old ground, as well they might.

The arguments regarding the housing crisis are now more than well-rehearsed; they feel dispirited by endless repetition. To some extent, it feels as if the sector is going through the motions, as it faces up to the prospect of five more years (at least) of repeating itself to politicians who present a deaf ear to the arguments while paying lip service to the housing crisis.

Actually, accusing the Government of ignoring the housing crisis is unfair. In a sense, the Queen’s Speech has provided the answer that the Homes for Britain campaign asked for: that government present a plan to take on the housing crisis within the first year of it coming into office. Well, the first full-blooded Tory legislative package since 1996 has done just that – with, of course, a huge focus on home ownership.

Cameron’s Government is offering over a million homes for sale at a massive knockdown price in an effort to boost the levels of home ownership. Okay, so that’s over a million homes that already exist and are currently owned by housing associations, but that’s Right-to-Buy for you. Meanwhile, the Housing Bill is also offering to build new homes, such as the cut-price so-called Starter Homes for a section of hard-pressed first-time buyers, and an intent to carry through reforms to help people build their own homes.

It’s a plan, of sorts; just not necessarily a very good one. Voices in the housing sector have decried the package – especially Right-to-Buy’s extension – as no solution to the housing crisis at all and likely to make it worse. Doubtless, that’s true. But in political calculus a solution only has to work for the right people. It remains to be seen if the Prime Minister’s backroom Machiavellis have got their sums right, but if he holds to his no-third-term pledge, then any fallout will be his successor’s problem.

As it is, Cameron might well ask – who’s gonna stop me? The clock is ticking, but the Prime Minister is currently in something of a grace period while opposition pulls itself together and regroups. The SNP is finding its feet in the Commons. The Labour Party, thrown into disarray, is embroiled in finding a new leader and in figuring out what it actually stands for.

The same might be said of the housing industry, as it ponders the way ahead: social purpose or commercial value; ditch the poor and the vulnerable for a ‘better class’ of customer or hold true to its principles? With all this in mind, it may seem that the likelihood of the social – or should we say the ‘affordable’ – housing industry’s representatives gaining a favourable ear in Cameron’s ‘court’ is slight – except insofar as they oil the wheels of his Government’s housing policies.

So it begs the question, and it’s one neither the CIH nor the NHF will like, but for the millions of people looking for a secure home at a price they can genuinely afford, just how relevant are either organisation likely to be five years from now, if not sooner? It’s a sobering question.

As the housing world ponders the answer to that one, it may be that Cameron’s political alchemists have miscalculated after all. Right-to-Buy is as much a threat to the assets of the commercial-in-tooth-and-claw brigade, as it is to those who are sticking to their social guns. Indeed, one might argue it’s a bigger threat to the former.

Certainly, it provides a focal point for unity of resistance. Far from neutering dissent within the housing world, Right-to-Buy has provided a galvanising stimulus. Both Smart and Orr demonstrated a resurgent vigour in their response to the confirmed policy; a chorus of voices – both from within the housing world and from walks of life beyond – have voiced opposition to the notion of extending Right-to-Buy to housing associations. It seems the policy has few friends outside of Cameron’s coterie of minions.

Suddenly, housing doesn’t seem quite so lonely and divided any more. Right-to-Buy remains a clear and present danger, but if the sector can forge the right alliances to capitalise on this near-unanimous declaration of dissent, it might finally be able to build the kind of opposition that ministers are unable to dismiss.

In dishing out a little Right-to-Buy revenge, David Cameron might well have invoked his Nemesis. We shall see. Remember to keep the dish chilled.


This article originally appeared in the June/July 2015 print edition of Housing magazine. It subsequently reappeared on the Housing Excellence website, 24 June 2015


Main photo: Arron Hoare (Crown Copyright)