Wood Magazine - Issue 4, 2014

Photo: Aedas

The LAND Experience Center has an eye-catching sculptural exterior. The billowing form interacts with the surrounding landscape.
Photo: Aedas

The LAND Experience Center has an eye-catching sculptural exterior. The billowing form interacts with the surrounding landscape.
Photo: Aedas

The LAND Experience Center has an eye-catching sculptural exterior. The billowing form interacts with the surrounding landscape.
Photo: Aedas

The LAND Experience Center has an eye-catching sculptural exterior. The billowing form interacts with the surrounding landscape.
Photo: Aedas

The LAND Experience Center has an eye-catching sculptural exterior. The billowing form interacts with the surrounding landscape.
Photo: Aedas

The LAND Experience Center has an eye-catching sculptural exterior. The billowing form interacts with the surrounding landscape.

History may promote wood construction in China

Land Experience Center ni Xian, China by Aedas

In China, the world’s largest construction market, wood has long been an overlooked material. Now change is under way. The LAND Experience Center in Xian suggests an exciting future.

XIAN IS THE capital of the Shaanxi Province in north-eastern China and was founded over 3,000 years ago. For a third of that time, Xian also served as the capital of China. Thirteen dynasties had their power bases here, but in the early 10th century, the city lost its importance.

Today Xian has a new-found status as one of China’s three most popular cities for tourism. This has given it a renewed self-confidence and an economic boost. One of the city’s leading attractions is the world-famous Terracotta Army, which was discovered only 40 years ago.

LAND, ONE OF the biggest property developers in the region, recently commissioned the interactive LAND Experience Center (LEC), where companies can present their visions and development plans for the city centre and at the same time market themselves. The internal floor space is around 2,200 square metres, a space that includes an exhibition hall, an activity room, administrative offices and a separate exhibition wing. However, the first thing to strike visitors is the eye-catching sculptural exterior. The billowing form has been designed to interact with its backdrop of a rolling landscape and urban cityscape. The LAND Experience Center lies on the border between the old core of the city and the burgeoning modern areas, creating a kind of gateway between them, small and intimate yet generous in its scope.

The idea is that the building reflects Xian’s dynamism and double identity, a city rich in history that at the same time is looking ambitiously towards the future, explains chief designer Ping Jiang at the architectural firm Aedas, which designed the LEC.

“We battled hard to come up with a modern interpretation of the architecture in this imperial city. We looked for inspiration in the provincial landscape, antique artefacts, local architecture and so on. The design of the building is influenced more by methods in contemporary art than by specific trends in construction.”

IN ADDITION TO its look, the LEC stands out in another crucial way. Much of the building, including the facade, is made of wood. This is unusual in China, where wood tends to be used very little as a construction material. The main emphasis generally lies on concrete and steel structures with plenty of glass.

“But in ancient China, there was a long tradition of building in wood. It’s only in modern times that it has fallen out of favour,” says Ping Jiang.

He is highly optimistic about the future of wood as a construction material in China. The country is not only the largest economy, but also the biggest construction market in the world. There is a shortage of construction materials, and China therefore needs alternative materials for its enormous building programme. In addition, the country is expected to take a more sustainable and eco-friendly approach to construction in future.

“The sustainable character of wood and the material’s unique aesthetic offer unique opportunities for the Chinese construction industry to re-examine its attitude towards wooden architecture. With more and more architects and developers preferring the material, a number of projects have been given the green light recently.”

AS SUCH, THE LAND Experience Center points towards the future. An important part of the building is the striking veneered plywood facade. The material is used over the whole pavilion to create a warm feel. The veneered plywood is supported by thick aluminium tubing, which has been bent in certain places to create the dynamic geometry of the building. In addition to the wood cladding, the exterior also features a wall and roof system in metal with standing seams, which envelopes the building.

According to Ping Jiang, it is this latter structure that fulfils the requirements concerning ventilation, acoustics and fire safety. The building is essentially a steel structure, but with eye-catching use of wood that sets the tone. Ping Jiang estimates that around 12 percent of the building is made from wood.

“This is a mature, high-performance system that is starting to be used more widely in China. The LEC has also been erected on a specially constructed raft foundation, which makes the building portable. The idea is that it will eventually be moved to a nearby park and converted into a museum of modern art. Its relatively small scale also makes the building easy to maintain,” relates Ping Jiang.

“It is only two stories high, so it can be kept in good condition using a pressure washer.”

Text Johan Bentzel

A BRIGHT FUTURE FOR WOOD IN CHINA

Aedas is a leading global architecture and design practice providing services within Asia, the Middle East, Europe and America. Established in 2002, it currently employs 1,400 people at 12 offices in seven countries. The company is built on the belief that good design can only be delivered by people with a deep social and cultural understanding of the communities they are designing for: architecture is a product of its surroundings.

Architects: Aedas
Client: Land Group
Contractor: China State Construction Engineering Corporation (main contractor) and, for the outer hull, Beijing Jangho Group
Cost: A little over SEK 35 million

China is the world’s biggest construction market, with over 10 million new apartments completed each year. Wood is used very little as a construction material. Concrete, brick, steel and glass dominate.

Together with other wood industry organisations, Swedish Wood is part of European Wood, which has introduced timber roof trusses and wall systems for apartment blocks in China, amongst other things. One major success was the new fire safety standard for wooden structures which recently fell into place (see article to the right).

There is excellent potential to create a good construction market for wood in China.

China has a strong need for supplementary construction materials, which bodes well for wood. The Chinese authorities also need to deliver good examples of how they will reduce carbon emissions. This is another good argument in favour of wood, which has a minimal carbon footprint and also has other environmental benefits, not least its storage of carbon dioxide, its renewability and the way it reduces the need for separate heat insulation.

»WE NEED MORE WOODEN BUILDINGS THAT HIGHLIGHT THE BENEFITS«

Jan Söderlind is International Director at Swedish Wood and Chairman of European Wood, and has been working for nine years to introduce wood to the Chinese construction market. European Wood is a joint European venture to increase China’s use of wood in buildings. The industry organisation Swedish Wood represents Sweden in European Wood.

How has this work been run?
“Above all, European Wood has worked to create platforms for good wood standards and norms in China. The focus is on increasing wood construction in apartment blocks and larger structures, for example using glulam. When we began nine years ago, there were practically no wood standards to speak of in China, but there are now. We’re also building up the knowledge of architects and engineers, and creating motivation within public bodies.”

How has it gone?
“The standards are now in place. The Chinese fire safety standard was the final piece of the jigsaw, and it has just been approved. Now we have a platform to stand on in developing wood construction. But we’re not stopping there. The fire safety standard is comparable with the standards we had in Sweden in 1995, before the new European standard came in and paved the way for higher multi-storey buildings. In China at the moment, it is permitted to build no more than three floors in wood. It need not be a three-storey building – it could be a ten-storey high-rise where the top three storeys are made of wood. The next step is to work towards a function-driven fire safety standard based on the modern fire safety standard that we currently have in Sweden and Europe.”

What other challenges are there?
“In the long term, we want to make wood a fully accepted construction material. We’ve begun to build up the knowledge base, but we need good examples that highlight the benefits of building in wood. There are a number of major projects that have been designed for wood, but where the Chinese authorities have not yet taken the plunge and given the go-ahead. We are very close to a breakthrough. It won’t be long before we start seeing much more wood construction in China, compared with what we have today.”