The Best Use of Timber Awards 2018 exhibition showcases the winner and shortlisted entries to the annual RIAS Awards scheme. Forestry Commission Scotland and Wood for Good combined to sponsor this award. The exhibition, curated by Architecture and Design Scotland, will run at The Lighthouse in Glasgow and runs from 14th January 2019 till the 5th April 2019.

The Award is aimed at encouraging innovative and creative use of timber in new buildings in Scotland. The exhibition features the winning and shortlisted projects, demonstrated through photography and models.

Potential of Timber

The award seeks to stimulate greater appreciation of home-grown timber and its potential for use in construction, with added consideration given to thoughtful and appropriate use of different species. Technical competence is, of course, paramount and the design and detail of how the timber is used was as much a part of the assessment criteria as imagination and overall architectural excellence. There is no restriction on building type or scale of the project – from small to large and from domestic to commercial, the challenge is to show how suited the use of timber is to the development of new architecture in Scotland.

Bath Street Collective

When Bath Street Collective started meeting together as a group, one of the key topics of conversation surrounded how ‘green’ they wanted the building to be. The collective wanted the project to be as sustainable as possible and they soon arrived at a brief that called for the building to be designed to Passivhaus equivalent standards of energy efficiency, with an all-electric strategy that would allow them to run free from fossil fuels.

Shortlisted Projects

The Black Shed, a house on Skye by Mary Arnold-Foster Architects internally lined with Douglas Fir.
Lochside House by Haysom Ward Miller Architects is in a remote rural location, with all materials brought to site by trailer along a narrow track.
In the Hawkhead Centre for the War Blinded in Paisley by Page\Park dark and light timbers are used as part of the visual contrast strategy.
At the Falls of Shin Visitor Centre, Achany Sutherland by CH Architecture Timber was the key materials used in this woodland setting.