ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that wood has fundamental differences to those other materials, because it grows both ubiquitously and with specific local characteristics. The development of engineered wood products has contributed to recent advances in the application of wood in architecture by providing stable, consistent material that can be worked with in complex ways. Hooke Park represents the issues in microcosm. It is a 150-hectare woodland in the west of England that is owned by the London-based Architectural Association. Arranged in a two-way spanning lattice grid, the green roundwood thinnings were spliced to form long elements that span the central 9x9m communal space and over sail the eight surrounding bedrooms. The opportunity to implement this came in 2010, with the update of an extant planning permission to create a new masterplan for growth of the Hooke Park campus. Curvatures in the Boiler House were formed using an opposite approach: by using naturally curved trees.
