̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Centre for Natural Material Innovation

Sowing seeds for timber skyscrapers can rewind the carbon footprint of the concrete industry

ehs33 — Fri, 28 Jun 2019 12:51:58 +0000

Recent innovations in engineered timber have laid the foundations for the world’s first wooden skyscrapers to appear within a decade, a feat that is not only achievable—according to the Centre for Natural Material Innovation—but one they hope will beckon in an era of sustainable wooden cities, helping reverse historic emissions from the construction industry.

̽��ֱ��research team based at the Faculty of Architecture, is interdisciplinary, composed of architects, biochemists, chemists, mathematicians and engineers, who specialise in plant-based material, including cross-laminated timber, arguably the first major structural innovation since the advent of reinforced concrete, 150 years ago.

Principal Investigator Dr Michael Ramage, said “Until cross-laminated timber, there was simply no building material to challenge steel or reinforced concrete. To construct cities and indeed skyscrapers, we just had to accept the good and the bad of existing materials.

“Concrete is about five times heavier than timber, which means more expense for foundations and transport; it’s resource-intensive, and contributes to tremendous carbon dioxide emissions. After water, concrete is the most consumed material by humanity. But now we have an alternative, and it’s plant-based.”

̽��ֱ��team envisage trees supplanting concrete as the predominant building material for cities, with buildings sown like seeds and cities harvested as crops, a way of simultaneously addressing climate change and global housing shortages.

Dr Ramage explained: “In England alone, we need to build 340,000 new homes each year over the next 12 years to accommodate our population. Concrete is unsustainable. Timber, however, is the only building material we can grow, and that actually reduces carbon dioxide. Every tonne of timber expunges 1.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Doing the calculations, if all new English homes were constructed from timber, we could capture and offset the carbon footprints of around 850,000 people for 10 years.

“ ̽��ֱ��sustainable forests of Europe take just 7 seconds to grow the volume of timber required for a 3 bedroom apartment, and 4 hours to grow a 300 metre supertall skyscraper. Canada’s sustainable forests alone yield enough timber to house a billion people in perpetuity, with forested trees replenishing faster than their eventual occupants.”

Various teams around the world are hoping to produce the tallest wooden skyscraper, however the team from Cambridge is confident they’ll be the first, having done holistic work on three proposals for timber skyscrapers in London, Chicago, and the Hague, all of which are set to be showcased to the public at the Royal Society’s Summer Science Exhibition 2019, freely open to the public from July 1–7.

̽��ֱ��team’s exhibit—Timber towers of tomorrow—will embody their vision, the stand itself modelled after a typical apartment nested within their proposed Oakwood Timber Tower at the Barbican Tower, where visitors can experience life in a treehouse while talking with the team, viewing architectural models of timber towers, learning about the fire performance properties of engineered timber, and hearing about the genetic, cellular, and macroscale innovations which have led to ply in the sky designs becoming a reality.

Beyond tackling climate change and promoting sustainability, the team are eager to outline the branching benefits society stands to gain by embracing timber architecture: the psychological well-being that comes from being surrounded by wood as compared with concrete, as well as the return to an ancient building material, that’s intimate as it is natural.

A bold response to the world’s greatest challenge
̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge is building on its existing research and launching an ambitious new environment and climate change initiative. Cambridge Zero is not just about developing greener technologies. It will harness the full power of the ̽��ֱ��’s research and policy expertise, developing solutions that work for our lives, our society and our biosphere.

̽��ֱ��Centre for Natural Material Innovation exhibited their proposals for timber skyscrapers at the Royal Society’s Summer Science Exhibition.

Wooden skyscrapers: Sustainable homes of the future?

River Beech Tower Chicago

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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House of moveable wooden walls promising cheaper, greener alternative to ‘knocking through’, wins award

ta385 — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 10:30:00 +0000

House-owners the world over consider ‘knocking through’ walls to achieve more open-plan living or changing layouts to accommodate new arrivals or circumstances. ̽��ֱ��results may be impressive, but they come at a sizeable financial and environmental cost. But what if it wasn’t necessary to demolish internal brick and/or plaster walls and build new ones?

In June 2023, researchers at Cambridge’s Centre for Natural Material Innovation unveiled 'Ephemeral', an innovative alternative using engineered wood, at the London Design Biennale. ̽��ֱ��team, including partners PLP Architecture, went on to win the Public Choice Award for EUREKA!, the Biennale's first showcase of design-led innovation from UK research centres.

̽��ֱ��project, led by Cambridge researcher Ana Gatóo, invites visitors to step into a home constructed around principles of affordability, sustainability, flexibility and adaptation. ̽��ֱ��flexible wooden partition walls – developed by Gatóo as part of her Cambridge PhD research – are made using kerfing, which allows wood to bend without breaking, the same technique employed in the construction of guitars and other stringed instruments.

̽��ֱ��resulting wooden walls are simple, resilient, foldable and movable, meaning they can respond to the changing needs of residents, for instance, as children are born or leave the nest; as age or mobility bring changing requirements; or as homeworking patterns change.

Watch a short film about the project

Gatóo says: “Self-assembly and modular furniture have improved so many people’s lives. We’ve developed something similar but for walls so people can take total control of their interior spaces.”

“If you have lots of money, you can hire a designer and alter the interiors of your house, but if you don't, you're stuck with very rigid systems that could be decades out-of-date. You might be stuck with more rooms than you need, or too few. We want to empower people to make their spaces their own.”

̽��ֱ��team’s ‘rooms of requirement’ provide elegant, affordable solutions which can be built into the fabric of the building from its first design, or seamlessly retrofitted – avoiding the mountains of carbon associated with demolition and reconstruction.

Gatóo says: “We’re using engineered timber, which is affordable and sustainable. It's a natural material which stores carbon, and when you don’t need it anymore, you can make something else with it. So you are creating minimal waste.”

Gatóo and her colleagues are based in the ̽��ֱ��’s Centre for Natural Material Innovation, a world leader in research into innovative and sustainable uses of timber in construction.

̽��ֱ��team emphasises that their system could be used anywhere in the world, in workplaces as well as in homes, and the researchers have already had encouraging conversations with industry, including with affordable housing developers in India.

Gatóo says: “I’ve worked in development and post-disaster housing with NGOs in many countries around the world, always using sustainable materials. When I started my PhD, I wanted to merge making housing more affordable and social with technical innovation and sustainability. This is what our cities of the future need – caring for people and the environment at the same time.”

Implemented at scale, this innovation could change the construction industry for the better, empowering people to adapt their spaces to their needs while slashing housing costs and overcoming some of the hurdles which the construction industry must tackle to be part of a sustainable future.

Working with Cambridge Enterprise, the research team is seeking industry and policy partners to further advance product feasibility for industry-wide adoption.

̽��ֱ��project is supported by PLP Architecture, ̽��ֱ��Laudes Foundation, the Future Observatory and the AHRC Design Accelerator.

Cambridge architects have won a public choice award at the London Design Biennale for a prototype home constructed with flexible wooden partition walls which can be shifted to meet the changing needs of residents. ̽��ֱ��invention aims to reduce waste and carbon while also improving living conditions for those who cannot afford expensive refurbishments.

This is what our cities of the future need – caring for people and the environment at the same time

Ana Gatóo

Ron Bakker

Ephemeral exhibit at the London Design Biennale 2023

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Attribution-Noncommerical

Putting plants under the microscope

jg533 — Fri, 18 Jun 2021 08:13:57 +0000

Advanced microscopes at the ̽��ֱ��’s Sainsbury Laboratory are revealing the potential of plants as green factories for new chemicals and materials - as well as their intricate beauty.

Bamboo bats... Howzat?!

ta385 — Mon, 10 May 2021 05:00:00 +0000

Cricket bats should be made from bamboo rather than traditional willow, say researchers from Cambridge’s Centre for Natural Material Innovation. Extensive tests showed that bamboo performs better than willow as well as being more sustainable and cheaper.

Life-saving origami

ta385 — Tue, 21 Apr 2020 12:30:12 +0000

Cambridge researchers are sharing a quick and easy way to mass produce face shields for health workers in the poorest countries.

Visualising heat flow in bamboo could help design more energy-efficient and fire-safe buildings

jg533 — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 10:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��building sector currently accounts for 30-40% of all carbon emissions, due to both the energy-intensive production of the materials (predominantly steel and concrete), and the energy used in heating and cooling the finished buildings. As the global population grows and becomes increasingly based in towns and cities, traditional building approaches are becoming unsustainable.

Renewable, plant-based materials such as bamboo have huge potential for sustainable and energy-efficient buildings. Their use would dramatically reduce emissions compared to traditional materials, helping to mitigate the human impact on climate change. This approach would also help keep carbon out of the atmosphere by diverting timber away from being burnt as fuel.

̽��ֱ��study involved scanning cross-sections of bamboo vascular tissue, the tissue that transports fluid and nutrients within the plant. ̽��ֱ��resulting images revealed an intricate fibre structure with alternating layers of thick and thin cell walls. Peaks of thermal conductivity within the bamboo structure coincide with the thicker walls, where chains of cellulose – the basic structural component of plant cell walls – are laid down almost parallel to the plant stem. These thicker layers also give bamboo its strength and stiffness. In contrast, the thinner cell walls have lower thermal conductivity due to cellulose chains being almost at a right angle to the plant stem.

“Nature is an amazing architect. Bamboo is structured in a really clever way,” said Darshil Shah, a researcher in Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Department of Architecture, who led the study. “It grows by one millimetre every ninety seconds, making it one of the fastest growing plant materials. Through the images we collected, we can see that it does this by generating a naturally cross-laminated fibre structure.”

While much research has been done on the cell structure of bamboo in relation to its mechanical properties, almost none has looked at how cell structure affects the thermal properties of the material. ̽��ֱ��amount of heating and cooling required in buildings is fundamentally related to the properties of the materials they are made from, particularly how much heat they conduct and store.

A better understanding of the thermal properties of bamboo provides insights into how to reduce the energy consumption of bamboo buildings. It also enables modelling of the way bamboo building components behave when exposed to fire, so that measures can be incorporated to make bamboo buildings safer.

“People may worry about fire safety of bamboo buildings,” said Shah. “To address this properly we have to understand the thermal properties of the building material. Through our work we can see that heat travels along the structure-supporting thick cell wall fibres in bamboo, so if exposed to the heat of a fire the bamboo might soften more quickly in the direction of those fibres. This helps us work out how to reinforce the building appropriately.”

At present, products such as laminated bamboo are most commonly used as flooring materials due to their hardness and durability. However, their stiffness and strength is comparable to engineered wood products, making them suitable for structural uses as well. “Cross-laminated timber is a popular choice of timber construction material. It’s made by gluing together layers of sawn timber, each at a right angle to the layer below,” said Shah. “Seeing this as a natural structure in bamboo fibres is inspiration for the development of better building products.”

̽��ֱ��team of researchers, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the ̽��ֱ�� of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, also plans to look at what happens to heat flow in bamboo when its surface is burned and forms char. ̽��ֱ��use of scanning thermal microscopy to visualise the intricate make-up of plants could also be useful in other areas of research, such as understanding how micro-structural changes in crop stems may cause them to fall over in the fields resulting in lost harvests.

Shah is a member of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s interdisciplinary Centre for Natural Material Innovation, which aims to advance the use of timber in construction by modifying the tissue-scale properties of wood to make it more reliable under changing environmental conditions.

̽��ֱ��research was funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the Austrian Science Fund and the Lower Austrian Research and Education Society.

Reference
Shah, D.et al: “Mapping thermal conductivity across bamboo cell walls with scanning thermal microscopy.” Scientific Reports (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-53079-4

Modified natural materials will be an essential component of a sustainable future, but first a detailed understanding of their properties is needed. ̽��ֱ��way heat flows across bamboo cell walls has been mapped using advanced scanning thermal microscopy, providing a new understanding of how variations in thermal conductivity are linked to the bamboo’s elegant structure. ̽��ֱ��findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, will guide the development of more energy-efficient and fire-safe buildings, made from natural materials, in the future.

Nature is an amazing architect. Bamboo is structured in a really clever way.

Darshil Shah

Researcher profile: Dr Darshil Shah

Dr Darshil Shah is a Lecturer in the Department of Architecture who loves nature. “Nature is the master creator and architect!” he says. “My research is focused on how we can better use our natural resources to produce sustainable materials, which can be used in high-end and high-performance applications.”

He studied Mechanical Engineering with Mathematics at the ̽��ֱ�� of Nottingham, where a summer internship sparked his interest in real-world design.

“As an undergraduate student I had a fantastic opportunity to work on the design and manufacture of a five kilowatt wind turbine for the campus,” says Shah. “ ̽��ֱ��day we installed it was so exciting. It made me realise the impact my work could have, and the importance of joining together fundamental and applied research.”

Shah’s subsequent PhD, on the low-cost manufacture of wind turbine blades for small-scale turbines, led him to think about using greener materials to avoid the blades ending up in landfill at the end of their life. He also spent time in Oxford ̽��ֱ��’s Silk Group, where he learned about natural materials.

“My time at Oxford plunged me into a whole new world. I started thinking about how our materials and built environment could be informed and inspired by the natural world – from the beautiful silk threads and webs of spiders and silkworms, to the magnificent ivory tusks of elephants,” he says.

In Cambridge, Shah is exploring how to use a wide range of virgin and waste bioresources, such as timber, bamboo and waste date palm fibres, to help create sustainable products - from buildings to boats.

“At the fundamental level I’m exploring natural materials and structures for inspiration,” he says. “At the applied level, I’m working with industry to optimise materials for various sectors, from construction to transport.”

Shah believes that breaking boundaries between disciplines, particularly arts and humanities, and science and technology, is the only way to truly tackle some of the global challenges we face.

“Cambridge has a rich mix of brilliant researchers, thinkers and doers,” he says. “I’ve made connections in so many different departments, and had the chance to work on a fantastic variety of projects that I don’t think would have been possible anywhere else.”

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Revealing the nanostructure of wood could help raise height limits for wooden skyscrapers

jg533 — Wed, 23 Oct 2019 04:00:00 +0000

There is increasing interest around the world in using timber as a lighter, more sustainable construction alternative to steel and concrete. While wood has been used in buildings for millennia, its mechanical properties have not, as yet, measured up to all modern building standards for major superstructures. This is due partly to a limited understanding of the precise structure of wood cells.

̽��ֱ��research, published today in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science, has also identified the plant Arabidopsis thaliana as a suitable model to help direct future forestry breeding programmes.

Dr Jan Lyczakowski, the paper’s first author from Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Department of Biochemistry, who is now based at Jagiellonian ̽��ֱ��, said, “It is the molecular architecture of wood that determines its strength, but until now we didn’t know the precise molecular arrangement of cylindrical structures called macrofibrils in the wood cells. This new technique has allowed us to see the composition of the macrofibrils, and how the molecular arrangement differs between plants, and it helps us understand how this might impact on wood density and strength.”

̽��ֱ��main building blocks of wood are the secondary walls around each wood cell, which are made of a matrix of large polymers called cellulose and hemicellulose, and impregnated with lignin. Trees such as the giant sequoia can only achieve their vast heights because of these secondary cell walls, which provide a rigid structure around the cells in their trunks.

̽��ֱ��team from Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Department of Biochemistry and Sainsbury Laboratory (SLCU) adapted low-temperature scanning electron microscopy (cryo-SEM) to image the nanoscale architecture of tree cell walls in their living state. This revealed the microscopic detail of the secondary cell wall macrofibrils, which are 1000 times narrower than the width of a human hair.

To compare different trees, they collected wood samples from spruce, gingko and poplar trees in the Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Botanic Garden. Samples were snap-frozen down to minus 200°C to preserve the cells in their live hydrated state, then coated in an ultra-thin platinum film three nanometres thick to give good visible contrast under the microscope.

“Our cryo-SEM is a significant advance over previously used techniques and has allowed us to image hydrated wood cells for the first time”, said Dr Raymond Wightman, Microscopy Core Facility Manager at SLCU. “It has revealed that there are macrofibril structures with a diameter exceeding 10 nanometres in both softwood and hardwood species, and confirmed they are common across all trees studied.”

Cryo-SEM is a powerful imaging tool to help understand various processes underlying plant development. Previous microscopy of wood was limited to dehydrated wood samples that had to be either dried, heated or chemically processed before they could be imaged.

̽��ֱ��team also imaged the secondary cell walls of Arabidopsis thaliana, an annual plant widely used as the standard reference plant for genetics and molecular biology research. They found that it too had prominent macrofibril structures. This discovery means that Arabidopsis could be used as a model for further research on wood architecture. Using a collection of Arabidopsis plants with different mutations relating to their secondary cell wall formation, the team was able to study the involvement of specific molecules in the formation and maturation of macrofibrils.

Dr Matthieu Bourdon, a research associate at SLCU, said, “ ̽��ֱ��variants of Arabidopsis allowed us to determine the contribution of different molecules - like cellulose, xylan and lignin - to macrofibril formation and maturation. As a result, we are now developing a better understanding of the processes involved in assembling cell walls.”

̽��ֱ��wealth of Arabidopsis genetic resources offers a valuable tool to further study the complex deposition of secondary cell wall polymers, and their role in defining the fine structure of cell walls and how these mature into wood.

“Visualising the molecular architecture of wood allows us to investigate how changing the arrangement of certain polymers within it might alter its strength,” said Professor Paul Dupree, a co-author of the study in Cambridge’s Department of Biochemistry. “Understanding how the components of wood come together to make super strong structures is important for understanding both how plants mature, and for new materials design.”

“There is increasing interest around the world in using timber as a lighter and greener construction material,” added Dupree. “If we can increase the strength of wood, we may start seeing more major constructions moving away from steel and concrete to timber.”

Professor Dupree and Dr Lyczakowski are involved in the Leverhulme Trust funded Natural Material Innovation Centre where a team of biochemists, plant scientists, architects, mathematicians and chemists at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge is working towards better understanding of wood structure, modification and application. ̽��ֱ��researchers are hoping they can make wooden skyscrapers, and even wooden cars, a reality by re-engineering the structure of wood in order to make better materials for construction and manufacturing. Their work was recently showcased at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition in London.

This study was supported by the Leverhulme Trust Centre for Natural Material Innovation, US Department of Energy, BBSRC, ERC and Gatsby Charitable Foundation.

Reference

J. Lyczakowski et al. ‘Structural imaging of native cryo-preserved secondary cell walls reveals the presence of macrofibrils and their formation requires normal cellulose, lignin and xylan biosynthesis.’ Frontiers in Plant Science (2019) DOI:10.3389/fpls.2019.01398

Cambridge researchers have captured the visible nanostructure of living wood for the first time using an advanced low-temperature scanning electron microscope.

Understanding how the components of wood come together to make super strong structures is important for understanding both how plants mature, and for new materials design.

Paul Dupree

Microscopic structure of spruce wood

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Innovative stadium will be the home of cricket in East Africa

ag236 — Fri, 27 Oct 2017 09:18:26 +0000

Some 1,500 people –including Rwandan president Paul Kagame— are expected to attend the opening of the country’s first international standard stadium on Saturday 28 October. ̽��ֱ��event will feature a match between teams led by former England captain Michael Vaughan and South African record-breaking cricketer Herschelle Gibbs.

Although cricket is one of the fastest growing sports in Rwanda, the country has not had, until now, a pitch that was appropriate for hosting international matches. Rwandan teams could only compete internationally by travelling to other countries, while Rwandan fans were unable to watch their own teams in action on home ground.

̽��ֱ��new cricket grounds in Gahanga, a southern suburb of the Rwandan capital, Kigali, are the result of a partnership between the Rwanda Cricket Stadium Foundation –a British charity—, the Rwanda Cricket Association, the Government of Rwanda, and architectural firm Light Earth Designs (LED), co-founded by Cambridge lecturer Dr. Michael Ramage.

One of the new grounds' most recognisable features is a pavilion consisting of three vaults constructed with 66,000 handmade tiles made by local workers using locally-sourced materials. ̽��ֱ��vaults’ shape mimics the parabolic geometry of a bouncing ball, and echoes Rwanda’s hilly topography.

These instantly recognisable vaults are the final product of research carried out by Dr. Ramage, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Centre for Natural Material Innovation, with Ms Ana Gatóo and Mr Wesam Al Asali. They build on Dr. Ramage’s earlier work alongside Dr. Matt DeJong (Cambridge) and Prof. John Ochsendorf (MIT).

Dr. Ramage and Prof. Ochsendorf had pioneered the pavilion’s characteristic soil tiled vaulting with architect Peter Rich of LED, at the Mapungubwe Interpretative Centre in South Africa. Adapted for the Rwandan context with Mr Tim Hall, LED co-founder and project lead, the vaults rise out of the cut soil banking formed as the pitch was levelled, integrating seamlessly with the landscape. ̽��ֱ��banking creates a natural amphitheatre with views over the pitch and the wetland valley beyond.

̽��ֱ��project is part of a 5-year initiative led by Light Earth Designs to assist Rwandan development. It aims to encourage the use of home-grown, labour-intensive construction techniques, thereby lowering the carbon footprint of local building projects, enhancing local skills and helping to build the local economy.

Speaking ahead of the opening ceremony, Dr. Ramage said: “the Rwanda Cricket Stadium embodies not only the spirit of cricket in Rwanda, but also that of the men and women who crafted and constructed the building over the past few months.”

Cambridge architectural engineer is part of the team that has built Rwanda’s first international stadium

Light Earth Designs

View of Rwanda Cricket Stadium

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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