Swiss Woodwork

Architectural Review, The, May, 2000 by Meili, Peter

ENGINEERING SCHOOL, BIEL-BIENNE, SWITZERLAND

Meili & Peter's new building for a Swiss timber engineering school in Biel challenges preconceptions of wood architecture through its large scale, abstract language and extensive employment of prefabricated elements.

The inherent capacity of timber to create architecture with a recognizable language and scale coupled with the growing importance of sustainability increasingly serves to confirm that wood is good. In Switzerland especially, it has also encouraged new approaches. With a major addition to the Swiss School of Engineering for the Wood Industry in Biel-Bienne, Meili & Peter challenge preconceptions of this important building material and explore notions of wha a contemporary wood architecture might be

Although clad in timber, the new addition strikingly ignores much of what is expected from a wood building: too long (at 93m), too tall (at four storeys), the windows and openings too large, the architectural language too abstract. And it imperiously slides by or ignores the site's endearing, 50-year old single-storey sheds which are immediately recognizable as wood buildings. For it is exactly their cosiness and hand craftedness that the architects felt did not provide an appropriate language for such an important new building. The school educate engineers and trains technicians in timber construction and carries out applied research and development. The architects' initial decision to put construction at the service of space and volume, as in a concrete building, for instance, was a radical rejection of conventional timber architecture.

Likewise, the larger context called for a fresh approach. On the periphery of a dense city with an industrial history of watch-making, the site is an unromantic edge condition. The building's dissonant proportion and mass, and its adoption of a classic tripartite division (though by being floated above the ground like an object, the base becomes a shadow) further sets it apart from the existing utilitarian sheds and their comfortable relationship to the landscape.

The scheme is composed of six independent blocks. Each is an independent structural entity, its skeletal frame made up of largely prefabricated elements. The substantial shear and lateral forces generated by such large windows is taken up by solid panels between the frames, creating a U-shaped element like a post and lintel turned upside down. Floors are hung rather than being built up as platforms and are made of hollow, glued timber beams laid edge to edge. These form an uninterrupted surface for the finished floor and preclude the use of lintels. Lateral walls dividing each floor plate are not structural and so can be placed according to the required room size. At the north end is a foyer and exhibition hall housed in a three-storey volume. This has fewer large windows and a blank north wall, devices that help dissipate its structural forces. Lit from above, the 11m high pine-clad space is breathtakingly warm, spacious and peaceful.

The central corridor containing vertical circulation and services is constructed of prestressed, in-situ concrete. As it is independent both structurally and programmatically, so it is defined as such materially. The marks of the plywood formwork on the concrete surface subtly evoke the presence of wood. Stairwells were left unfinished, with the corridors equally raw or sheathed in sheet metal panels.

The roof's large overhanging eaves unite the various elements below. Yet with only the roof load to carry, the horizontal and vertical roof structure (made up of hollow box beams) can skip along the elevations to define centres and voids, gently contradicting its unifying role. A meticulously crafted skin of unfinished Swiss oak further consolidates the building and on the main elevation alludes to the structural system. Hung in demountable panels, its fine lines and texture stand in contrast to the large voids and the blankness of the windows.

The architects' challenge to preconceptions of what constitutes wood architecture is most brazenly expressed on the site's eastern corner, where an extension wraps around one of the existing sheds. In this hall you literally see how structural forces are dissipated, and recognize the familiar language and scale of wood architecture. But contiguous to it, without so much as a threshold, are the long spans, large volumes, generous levels of daylight, composite structure and flat roof of the addition. STEVEN SPIER

1. The sharply faceted volume of the new wood engineering school rises above its mundane edge-of-town surroundings.

2. Herolc scale, large openings and extensive prefabrication combine to redefine conventional, cosy, vernacular expectations of timber architecture.

3. Raw materials and rustic single-storey timber sheds contrast in the adjacent yard with Meili & Peter's precisely honed skin of unfinished Swiss oak.

4. Large balconies open up the elevations, bringing light into the classrooms.

5. Tall foyer space lined with pine has a calm, sensuous resonance.