London Design Festival 2016: Alison Brooks Architects - Landmark Project -
The Smile. The Smile by Alison Brooks Architects, in
partnership with the American Hardwood Export Council and ARUP, is an urban
installation a spectacular pavilion, 34 m
long, that takes the shape of a Smile. It showcases the structural and spatial
potential of cross-laminated hardwood using American tulipwood. The structure
is open until October 12, to be explored by the public, offering a new way of
viewing its surrounding environment at Chelsea College of Art and Design, in
the background, and overlooking Tate Britain.
“A small
building that performs big miracles by demonstrating how hardwood CLT - cross-laminated timber - can perform as a structural
material.”
Alison
Brooks
Architect
Alison Brooks and Ben Evans director of the London Design Festival
Alison Brooks Architects - Landmark Project - The
Smile
The Smile is a four sided curved tube that curves
upward to its two open ends, allowing light to wash across its curved floor
like water across a spillway. Hovering 3m above the ground, its two ends are
viewing platforms that take in the sky and reach out to neighboring buildings.
Made entirely of tulipwood, and a segment of a 100m diameter circle, the Smile
creates an immersive environment that integrates structure, surface, space and
light.
“The most complex structure
ever built in CLT.”
Arup’s
Andrew Laurence
Alison Brooks Architects - Landmark Project - The
Smile
Arup have applied the latest timber research
combined with 4000 screws over a foot long to fasten the panels together. To
prevent it rocking, The Smile is anchored down to a wooden cradle filled with
20 tonnes of steel counterweights. The most complex CLT structure ever built
with its swooping 12m cantilevered arms and ground access, provides a massive
engineering challenge. This is accentuated
by the inclusion of perforations in the walls, concentrated where there is less
stress and dispersing were the timber is working the hardest.
A view of Tate Britain from The Smile