Architect behind “The House That Kevin Built” Salutes Accoya®
Architect : Duncan Baker-Brown
The award-winning architect behind the home built by design guru Kevin McCloud for the Grand Designs Live show has praised Accoya®.
Duncan Baker-Brown - enlisted to design the eco-friendly house for the Channel 4 show - said he was impressed with the outstanding durability and performance credentials of the revolutionary modified wood.
Kevin McCloud himself also paid tribute to the performance qualities of Accoya in the hit show.
Two doors and eight windows in the new house, built on-set over the duration of the show at the ExCel centre, were all constructed from Accoya®.
Westgate Joinery, enlisted by BSW Timber to support the launch of Accoya® to the market, used around 1.5 cubic metres of the timber to produce the windows and doors.
The windows and doors were then factory glazed with Pilkington energiKare TM double glazed units and factory finished with a three coat paint system manufactured by Teknos UK.
Mr Baker-Brown, director of award-winning architects BBM Sustainable Design, said Accoya was a key component in ensuring The House that Kevin Built’ was a genuinely cutting-edge home of the future.
“Accoya delivers superior levels of performance, stability and durability, allowing for greater flexibility and reducing the wood’s tendency to swell or shrink.
“It provides good environmental credentials by using wood from sustainable plantations and is 100 per cent non-toxic. The wood’s appearance, natural colour and strength are not affected in the process.”
Kevin McCloud heaped praise on the performance attributes of Accoya in a grand tour of the house: “The window frames are made of Accoya, the most rot-resistant engineered wood in existence......a timber which is so hard they can give it a guarantee of 50 years—extraordinary.”
The house featured leading building innovations with materials and techniques ranging from the traditional to the futuristic. Celebrities such as Janet Street Porter visited the house during the construction.
The house is to be re-erected at the UK’s Building Research Establishment’s (BRE) Innovation Park at Watford.
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“Accoya delivers superior levels of performance, stability and durability, allowing for greater flexibility and reducing the wood’s tendency to swell or shrink.
“It provides good environmental credentials by using wood from sustainable plantations and is 100 per cent non-toxic. The wood’s appearance, natural colour and strength are not affected in the process.”
Duncan Baker-Brown
