12 October 2012

Wood buildings performed well in the Canterbury earthquakes and many Christchurch people have been asking why they can’t rebuild with wood. Nelson and Marlborough businesses plan to help provide some positive answers at a seminar being held next week.

Organised by the Marlborough Forest Industry Association, in conjunction with the Marlborough Chamber of Commerce, it will look at how businesses in the region can work together to create some inspiring wood buildings for Christchurch.

The answer is not simple, but building systems developed by Marlborough businesses highlight some exciting possibilities.

Glenroy Housing won the Placemakers Supreme award at the Registered Master Builders 2011 House of the Year contest with an inspiring house in the Marlborough Sounds (pictured).

This house featured clever design and good use of different timber species grown in Marlborough. The house is built on poles to give great views over the water. The house was prefabricated in Glenroy’s factory to speed up construction on this difficult site. Other houses built by Glenroy in Christchurch came through the earthquakes undamaged.

Two other Blenheim businesses, Smart Alliances and Flight Timber, have been designing and building resorts in the Maldives. These buildings use a timber piling system first developed for jetties in the Marlborough Sounds. The resorts attract thousands of tourists from Europe.

A small region of Austria called Vorarlberg uses modern engineered wood building systems to create a whole range of  inspiring buildings. They now attract 30,000 tourists a year just to look at their buildings. Germany and Austria are world leaders in prefabricated wood building systems. They have supplied many buildings to the UK and a 10 storey apartment building on the Melbourne waterfront was recently built with large wood panels from Austria.

A plant has now been set up in Nelson to use the latest European wood building techniques. The company, Xlam, is able to produce structural wood panels up to 12 metres by 3 metres. These cross laminated timber panels have revolutionised wood building in Europe and it will be able to do the same here.

A seminar has been organised by the Marlborough Forest Industry Association, in conjunction with the Marlborough Chamber of Commerce and will be held at the Marlborough Research Centre next Saturday 20 October.

Source: Marlborough Forest Industry Association media release