Savill Gardens

In many ways this building was an innovative structure and from its inception at competition stage through to the final stages of construction, many technically demanding issues needed to be resolved. The roof of the building is a timber gridshell constructed of four layers of larch laths spliced together to create continuous lengths of up to 50 metres; these laths formed a grid which was then incrementally lowered to form the curves of the roof, then locked in place with ply sheets. The shell works in bending and internal axial forces and is supported and restrained around its perimeter by a three-dimensionally curved steel ring beam and raking steel legs. A complex series of foundation pads, thrust blocks and tie beams anchor the structure, in conjunction with the earth and glass-covered ancillary accommodation.

A paper submitted by the principal collaborators was published in The Structural Engineer and can be found here.

The project was the subject of a Timber Development UK Case Study.