Building Big and Beautiful: A Prefabricated Timber Design Case Study

Timber is widely regarded as the most sustainable material for mainstream construction projects. At the same time, it is often criticised as being expensive and architecturally restrictive. This paper argues, however, that timber can be an economically viable option for large scale projects without sacrificing architectural creativity. In so doing, the paper introduces a novel approach to the use timber in design, namely, in prefabrication. The benefits of prefabricated timber are illustrated in the context of a case study of the Open Academy, Norwich.