Modern Timber Construction

Haesley Nine Bridge Club House

Shigeru Ban Bending the Rules on Timber
Wood construction in the last 100 years has become more mechanized. Techniques for fabricating wood into glue laminated beams have allowed for long spans and optional bent shapes. Glulam Beams offers twice the strength to weight basis to steel.
Bent and Twisted Glulam Beam


The laminating, bending, and joining process have come to a epiphany in a project by Shigeru Ban on the Haesley Nine Bridge Club House in South Korea. The project uses complex double bent laminated beams.


The finished design is a tree like forms with columns that extend as trunks and geometrically spread into branches in a complex and beautiful display. This construction was accomplished with 3D modeling to generate the 15,000 lap joints. The design process was a collaboration with a company Design to Production that worked with Shigeru Ban's Architecture office to help produce the modeling that lead to the intricate fabrication of the 3,500 glulam parts.

Another great feature is the light source that flow from the the top of the columns and provides natural light and ventilation.




The best timber Joinery has always been the intricate interlocking timber details by Japanese Carpenters used on pagoda construction. These interlocking joints used no nails or screws and the construction is so strong that these buildings are still existing today even through some of the massive earthquakes that the Japanese have experienced. Japan has modernized the building method with mechanized C&C machines that cut the joinery into the timbers in seconds. The complete structural members are all automated and numbered to be assembled efficiently on the site.


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photo references:
http://www.worldarchitecture.org/world-buildings/fgng/haesley-nine-bridges-golf-club-house-building-page.html
http://www.shigerubanarchitects.com/SBA_WORKS/SBA_OTHERS/SBA_OTHERS_29/SBA_others_29.html
Glulam Fabrication

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