Alex de Rijke lecture

Timber is the new concrete
Thursday 10th January

A critique of architecture practice today is that it is mostly driven by formal preoccupations, the endless quest for new form providing even ambitious architects with blinkers during the conceptual design process. A willful ignorance of the sustainable industrial revolution now underway in northern Europe is coupled with the attitude that recycling, renewable energy, low CO2 etc is generally considered (by the ‘avant-garde’) to be the site of duty, not dynamic design. Yet scientists, environmentalists and even politicians, the press and hence public know energy, waste management and ozone control to be the inevitable future…

De Rijke’s abbreviated synopsis of technology as the key driver of architecture is as follows:

the 17 and 18C was the era of brick,
the 19C was the era of the steel frame,
the 20C was the era of concrete,
as global energy crisis develops and CO2 emissions become legal issues:
the 21C will become the era of renewable timber.

dRMM aim to produce useful architecture that is a expression (and critique of) social and cultural production, using industrialised materials and processes. Their direct ‘Off the Shelf’ approach to (lateral) design has been systematically researched, taught and exhibited at the Architecture Association, London, and applied in practice since 1995 as dRMM London. The practice’s projects have been published widely and have received many awards for innovation and
achievement in architecture.

Project material research has recently focused on engineered timber and ETFE, which dRMM regard as the most interesting sustainable high-performance materials of the future. dRMM is a leader of the international field in the architectural exploitation of these materials, and is exploring the correlation between concept, context, and construction. Particular preoccupations of the practice lie in structural timber systems, the possibility of all-timber buildings, and economy of means.