Nex– Architecture and Xylotek have completed a series of striking lattice timber pavilions at Regent’s Place in London
Photos
Luke Hayes
Nex– Architecture has collaborated with advanced timber structure specialist Xylotek to create a series of laminated oak pavilions designed to enhance the public spaces of London’s Regent’s Place. Lying east of Regent’s Park and west of Euston Station, Regent’s Place is a mixed-use commercial and residential campus developed by British Land from the mid-1990s.
Won in competition, the three pavilions have been designed in response to British Land’s vision for revitalising public spaces and pedestrian routes in, through, and out of Regent’s Place. They are conceived as semi-sheltered spaces designed for friends and colleagues to sit and relax between meetings or after-work hours for outdoor theatre and music performances, and for those walking through Regent’s Place from Euston Road.
The prefabricated pavilions are constructed from sustainably sourced oak, which has been formed into slender, finger-jointed laths
Inspired by nature, the pavilions gather thin strips of oak into delicate lattices to enclose visitors while also revealing the lush planting around them. Rounded in form, the two larger pavilions have a central oculus that is intended to draws people’s attention from the ground level planting to the sky.
The pavilions increase in size from west to east. The first welcomes people to gather and sit in conversation. The second encourages children and adults alike to play with a large circular spinning seat positioned in the centre of the path. The final pavilion creates a new tiered performance space for the local theatre group, and a venue for evening and weekend music.
Isometric plan
Nex– developed early designs through sketches, study models and VR simulation to determine the form, size and location of the pavilions. With these decisions made, the architect collaborated with design-to-manufacture partners Xylotek to complete computational studies that developed the irregular lattice structures into geometrically rigorous but non-uniform patterns of thin oak laths.
A key challenge for Xylotek was to ensure that the laths remained slender while being sufficiently stiff to create self-supporting lattices. The final design employed off-site manufacturing to improve craftsmanship, reduce waste, and minimise on-site assembly time. Using sustainably sourced oak, thin strips of timber were bent and laminated into their final curved shapes on room-sized jigs. Laminated strips were then layered together to make lattices, before being transported to site for final assembly with further layers of loose laths.
The pavilions form part of landscaping scheme designed to revitalise Regent’s Place’s public spaces and pedestrian routes
The laths forming each pavilion are arranged in four layers, with alternate layers spiralling in opposite directions. Within each layer the laths share similar geodesic curved shapes, meaning that they could be formed from initially straight oak ribbons. This meant that all the laths in one layer could be formed on a single bending jig, whilst visual dissimilarity was created by varying the laths lengths in a repeating pattern overlaid with a degree of randomness. This process created a visual play between a regular underlying pattern and a sense of natural variation.
In total there are more than 400 laths made from 10km of oak lamella strips. Each lath has a cross section of 65x40mm and is made of five layers of 8mm oak lamellas. By finger-jointing short lengths of oak end-to-end, lamellas measuring up to 9.5-metres long were formed. The glue-lamination was carried out in Xylotek’s Bristol workshop on a set of bespoke profiling jigs, and segments of each pavilion were preassembled in the workshop, positioned on site, and then overlaid with further laths to create the full 3D lattice of curved oak.
The doorway arches are also formed of glue-laminated oak and are formed in a way that best matches the pavilions’ complex curvature with single-direction curved elements. Surface treatments were applied to the laths in the workshop, to provide both fire protection and add to the durability of the timber.
Source: Architecture Today