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We have a close relationship with industry-leading Canadian timber engineers and construction specialists StructureCraft, and have collaborated with them on many projects.
We worked with them on Delugan Meissl Associated Architects’ Taiyuan Botanical Garden Restaurant.
The restaurant is a 2-way lattice structure which thickens from 3 layers at the roof edge to 9 layers at the dramatic central light well. The whole roof is supported by a scattering of thin steel columns giving the impression of it nearly floating.
DMAA describe the intention behind the design as:
The restaurant is designed in resemblance to the Chinese traditional temples, evoking the wooden structures as its design premise. After a few studies trying to potentiate the structure into a contemporary and reasonable basis, a shifted grid made from stacked timber beams was established as the main conductor of a very attractive and atmospheric space. Incorporated into the landscape, for one side, the restaurants geometry detaches itself from it, extending opening up to the lake.
Each long line of timber is made up of many smaller pieces that are joined together. One of the challenges was calculating where the timbers could be joined to meet a host of structural limitations relating to distance from the roof edge, the central atrium and the column clusters. In addition these join positions had to be optimised to miniumise the number of billet lengths used and reduce waste from cutting to an absolute minimum. This created a highly complex puzzle for which we had to find the most efficient solution.
You can read more about StructureCraft and their projects here.
Architect: Delugan Meissl Associated Architects
Timber Engineers & Construction: StructureCraft
Location: Taiyuan, China
