The winner of the Interiors Award at the 2020 Wood Awards is the Brockeridge Stair. Spruce’s Steve Silverthorne and Alex Difford were responsible for the joinery as part of the winning team behind the Brockeridge Stair.
Judge Ruth Slavid comments, “This is a very beautiful and impressive stair. In addition, there is a great story in that it was used to pioneer an approach to the use of BIM in joinery manufacture that is the recipient of ongoing government grants.”
The Wood Awards
The judges selected six structures and three products that represent the best of British architecture and product design in wood. Established in 1971, the Wood Awards is the UK’s premier competition for excellence in wood design. The competition is free to enter and aims to encourage and promote outstanding timber design, craftsmanship and installation.
The Wood Awards is one of the few design competitions to go ahead despite COVID-19. The independent panel of judges always visits all the shortlisted projects in person, making this a uniquely rigorous competition. This year, the usual judging process had to be adapted, but the competition persevered, and the judges still managed to see each project.
The Brockeridge Stair
Location: Bristol
Staircase & joinery design: Future Joinery Systems Ltd
Architect: CaSA Architects
Structural engineer: Mann Williams
Digital fabrication: FabLab Cardiff, Cardiff Metropolitan University’s School of Art & Design
Joinery: Silverthorne Joinery & Carpentry/Alex Difford
Wood supplier: Hanson Plywood Limited
Species: ash, birch
This prototype staircase is part of a UK government funded R&D project to enable digital fabrication directly from BIM modelling environments. The stair rises three floors and is cantilevered from flush mounted stringers. The parts were CNC machined and assembled onsite using standard tools. The new platform developed during research allows designs to be defined parametrically, enabling the user to configure bespoke objects to specific requirements. Parameters such as height, width, depth and material thickness can be user controlled. Digital manufacturing is enabled directly from CAD or BIM software via the platform which enables faster fabrication, better pricing information and reduces errors and waste. Items can be locally fabricated through a distributed manufacturing network model open to any CNC enabled workshop. The process greatly improves construction efficiency, supports COVID-19 social distancing restrictions, increases the type and complexity of work undertaken by smaller site-based joiners, and keeps the labour pool local.
More information and pictures from this project can be found here.