Ambitious and beautiful, the Timber Wave introduces new thinking and techniques.

The massive but light and sinuously curved timber structure, framing the entrance to London’s Victoria & Albert Museum during and after the London Design Festival in September 2011, was special in many ways.  A virtuoso piece of design by AL_A and engineer Arup, it was an investigation of just how far the technology of designing in wood can be pushed. It was also a showcase for American red oak, an abundant timber that is under-used in Europe. And it was a demonstration of collaboration not just between architect and engineer but also with the museum and with Cowley Timberwork; the specialist company that made and assembled the structure, known as the Timber Wave. 

Designed specifically to sit on the steps in front of the museum’s main entrance, and to frame the decorative entrance to the museum, the 12.5m high Timber Wave was the most immediately visible sign that was the third year of collaboration between the museum and the London Design Festival. Victoria Broackes, who was head of the London Design Festival at the Victoria & Albert Museum, said at the time, ‘We are absolutely thrilled to have a major installation on our doorstep.’ It acted as an advertisement for the fact that in 2011 the museum was hosting 12 installations and around 50 talks and events.

But it was doing so much more. The design team started working on ideas in Spring 2010 (their original hope was to make something for the 2010 London Design Festival) investigating different ways of making a timber structure that could be self-supporting. Very different from most timber structures, the Timber Wave was made from a family of small elements which, despite their detailed differences, showed a clear amount of repetition. 

Timber Wave was essentially a structure of chords and braces, a fairly simple structural idea to create a stable structure, but in this case the architect chose to curve all the elements, so that it was no longer easy to ‘read’ how the structure worked. Instead, one saw a delicate tracery, with the largest elements at the bottom, becoming even lighter at the top as there was less weight to support. Again, unlike most buildings, where the structure is there to hold up the enclosure, in this case the structure was the installation itself, an idea that is closer to the way in which a bridge is designed, rather than a building.