Dalston Lane: The World's Largest Timber Building

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Circle Economy and ICLEI have partnered up to initiate the go to knowledge hub of case studies about the circular economy in cities. The Cities Collection is a repository of case studies that demonstrate the role of cities in the circular transition, and includes policies, business cases and research articles. Cases in the Collection flow into an ecosystem of digital products which support users in transitioning cities to circularity, for example [Ganbatte](https://ganbatte.world/cities/) and <a href="https://circulars.iclei.org/" target="_blank">ICLEI Circulars</a>, both part of the <a href="https://circulars.iclei.org/circle-lab-for-cities/" target = _blank">Circle Lab for Cities Programme.</a>




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Circular Cities

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Business case

Reduced green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

Producing building materials and finished and semi-finished building products for construction

Construction Materials and Products

Ensure renewable, reusable, non-toxic resources are utilised as materials and energy in an efficient way

Prioritise regenerative resources

Account for the systems perspective during the design process, to use the right materials, to design for appropriate lifetime and to design for extended future use

Design for the future

Utilise bio-based, reusable, non-toxic and non-critical materials

Regenerative materials

Using bio-based materials such as bioplastics, mushroom-based materials, etc.

Alternative bio-based materials and inputs

Other

Develop regenerative infrastructure

**Harmonize with nature** by promoting infrastructure, production systems and sourcing that allows natural ecosystems to thrive




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Regenerate

Prioritize solutions that use the power of functioning ecosystems as infrastructure to provide natural services to benefit society and the environment; consider nature-based replacements for grey infrastructure.

Prioritise renewable resources 

The built environment, including housing, commercial buildings, and the necessary infrastructure for mobility, is essential for our livelihoods, but:
- the extraction of minerals used to produce construction materials is responsible for a quarter of global land use change,
- approximately 40% of global GHG emissions can be attributed to buildings’ construction, use and demolition, and
- construction and demolition processes drive nearly one-third of all material consumption. 

Making the built environment more circular must prioritise a heavy reduction in material use—while also closing the loop on materials and bringing secondary and renewable material choices to the fore. Our four key solutions for the built environment are:
- Make the most of what already exists: Make the most of existing materials by reusing, repurposing, upgrading and renovating following circular approaches. Where new builds are needed, use secondary materials and be as efficient as possible with urban planning solutions that follow circular design principles so that buildings can be reused, repurposed, and easily disassembled in the future.
- Be as energy efficient as possible: From the design phase, utilise circular strategies to create material- and energy efficient buildings. Couple these designs with a rollout of clean energy solutions, and prioritise energy-efficient appliances and retrofitting. 
- Utilise secondary materials: Maximise the high-value reuse of buildings and components where possible. Ideally, enable the utilisation of construction and demolition outputs and ensure that as much of it as possible is recycled to avoid the need for virgin materials, such as sand and gravel.
- Prioritise circular materials and approaches: Transition to using renewable wood, timber or cross-laminated timber instead of steel and concrete, or move to other locally available materials. Utilise mainstream modular construction and prioritise lightweight frames and structures to reduce cement and steel use, as well as green roofs where possible.



🏢 Built Environment

Businesses

Almost 60% of the built environment required to accommodate the earth’s urban population by 2050 remains to be built. Materials going into the built environment are currently dominated by non-renewable carbon-intensive minerals, such as concrete, asphalt, bricks, sand and gravel. As urbanisation increases, demand for these materials increases and related negative environmental impact follows. 

Substituting conventional materials with renewable bio-based materials can successfully cut demand for virgin materials—thereby decreasing the overall environmental impact of the built environment. Bio-based materials have far lower embodied carbon and can even act as carbon sinks, sequestering emissions from the atmosphere. They can replace hazardous materials like asbestos and improve the health and well-being of communities. Examples of these materials include: wood, bamboo, hemp, crop residues, as well as more sustainable forms of concrete (seaweed-crete, timber-crete, etc.). 

Local governments can promote the adoption of bio-based construction materials, for instance, by drawing up new tender criteria where bio-based products are part of new development projects, or by funding research and then regulating new cutting-edge materials that can substitute conventional construction materials.


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🏢  Bio-based construction materials

Regenerate strategies phase out hazardous or toxic materials and processes and substitute them with regenerative biomass resources. A circular economy aims to mimic natural cycles—by shifting to more regenerative farming practices, for example—while also maximising the share of circular biomass that enters the economy. Regeneration can happen both at the systems level (by designing regenerative processes) as well as at the product level (by switching synthetic to organic fertilisers, for example).

Impacts

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Industries

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A framework of policy instruments that enabled and encourage the transition to the circular economy

Policy Instruments

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A framework of policy instruments that enable and stimulate the transition to the circular economy

The principles of a circular economy concern designing out waste, regenerating ecosystems and keeping items in use. Decoupling the economy from material flows—improving the rate of resource productivity faster than the economic growth rate—is also a consistent guide. By evolving with the growing number of applications of circular economy principles, and consolidating these strategies across thematic areas, Circle Economy’s Key Elements Framework (KE) renders the elements of the circular economy salient and serves as a basis to derive contextual strategies and interventions. 


The Framework consists of:
- Core Elements: Activities directly handling product or material flows; and uniquely,
- Enabling Elements: those that remove obstacles for core actors.


Key elements of the circular economy

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Circle Economy's framework of strategies and activities that define the circular economy

Urban Opportunities

The Circular City Actions Framework provides urban changemakers with five complementary strategies they can use to start working towards a more circular system. 

The framework is action-based to provide users with concrete strategic directions and showcase the desired outcomes of each strategy. 
The framework consists of five complementary **strategies**, under which **sub-strategies** provide further detail. Finally, each sub-strategy consists of a diversity of tangible **solutions** which are framed in relation to key thematic areas. 

Note: solutions are currently focused on:
- 🍏 **Food systems**
- 🏢  **Built environment**
- 👕📱  **Consumer goods**
- ⚡ **Energy Systems**
- 🚌 **Mobility Systems**
- 💧 **Water Systems**

More thematic areas are coming soon...

'Click through each of the five strategy cards below to explore the framework and circular economy case studies in more depth!'



This framework was developed in collaboration with ICLEI, Metabolic and Ellen MacArthur Foundation with support from the MAVA Foundation. Read more about it [here]( https://circulars.iclei.org/action-framework/). 



Circular City Actions Framework

An action-based framework for local governments working towards circular cities

Thematic Areas

City Stakeholders

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Based on the work of [Bocken et al. (2016)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309699661_Product_design_and_business_model_strategies_for_a_circular_economy), the Four Flows Framework serves as a simple framework for managing resource flows in a circular economy by using less (Narrow), using for longer (Slow), using again (Cycle), and using clean, regenerative materials and energy (Regenerate).

These different principles of circular economy can be applied to our socioeconomic metabolism: we can design stocks like buildings, infrastructure, machinery, and vehicles to be rich resource mines for the future, and design manufactured goods and consumables to be cycled and made regenerative. Furthermore, the focus must also centre on getting more value out of fewer materials. Achieving the aims of a circular economy—minimising material use, regenerating the Earth, and preventing material losses—can be done through these four key strategies mentioned above.

Source: Circle Economy. (2023). *[The circularity gap report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023)* (p.22). Amsterdam: Circle Economy. 

Four Flows Framework

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 DALSTON LANE is the world’s largest cross-laminated timber (CLT) building. 
The landmark project demonstrates the potential of using timber to build high-density housing in London and beyond. In our short documentary, we speak to the building’s architect, structural engineer and client to discover how large buildings can be built with timber and why the material was used for this project. 

“This building is interesting and important because it demonstrates that you can build with cross-laminated timber at scale,” says Andrew Waugh, director of Waugh Thistelton, the architect that designed Dalston Lane.
The ten-storey, 121-unit development is made entirely from CLT from the first floor upwards, with core walls, through to the floors and stairs all made from the material.


Above: Dalston Lane is the largest cross-laminated timber building built to date (image courtesy of Daniel Shearin).
Timber has been used to create a large-scale building in both terms of height and volume, and for Waugh this demonstrates the benefits of using timber in construction. 
“The notion behind cross-laminated timber development is about urban housing – high-density housing”, he says. “This is a great example of how we can generate the housing we desperately need across London and the UK and how we can build this from solid timber.”
This ethos is echoed by David Lomax, senior associate at Waugh Thistleton and Dalston Lane’s project architect: “The reason we chose timber for Dalston Lane is because our practice believes that if we are going to build the homes we need to solve the UK’s housing crisis we need to do it in a sustainable way.”


Above: Building with timber has enabled an additional 15 homes to be built on the site (image courtesy of Daniel Shearin).
At this project, there were also specific constraints that made timber an ideal structural material. An existing train line and a planned train route run under the site, which created interesting challenges – a traditional piled foundation could not be used and there was a restriction on weight due to the reserved future High Speed 2 (HS2) link. 

Gavin White, engineering director at Ramboll explains how these constraints made CLT ideal for the scheme: “CLT buildings, when they are built with all the people and equipment in them, are about 30% lighter than an equivalent steel or concrete frame.”
"CLT buildings are about 30% lighter than an equivalent steel or concrete frame"
This meant that a lightweight and sustainable building was constructed and an additional 15 homes could be provided on the site; something that couldn’t have been achieved with steel or concrete.


Above: The structure of the building is constructed from CLT above the first floor (image courtesy of Daniel Shearin). 
At Dalston Lane, the amount of timber used has also been reduced. 
In total the building has 20% less timber per square metre than Murray Grove, a CLT building designed by Waugh Thistleton that was completed in 2008. The saving was achieved by reducing the amount of timber used across the building's height; the upper storeys using less.
Although the building is predominantly CLT, most timber buildings usually have an element of concrete at ground floor, keeping wood away from the wet. 
The same approach was adopted at Dalston Lane as Lomax explains: “From basement level through ground floor to the first floor slab we have a concrete building, but from there on up it is an exclusively timber structure. I think we have less than three and a half tonnes of steel in the entire building above that first-floor deck.”
While in the past people may have consider ed timber a fire risk, attitudes are changing. The Dalston Lane structure follows the requirements of the Eurocode and is fully certified.
 “Although it’s made out of timber, the timber here is a solid panel so trying to light it is like trying to light a log with a match,” says White.
 Above: CLT has been extensively fire tested (image courtesy of Daniel Shearin).  The timber itself is grown in sustainably managed forests in Austria and Germany before being manufactured into CLT in Austri a and driven to the UK. “We have used about 4,500 cubic meters of timber, which is about 2,300 trees and there will be 800 people in the building, so we like to think of it as about three trees per person,” says Waugh. In total there were 111 deliveries of timber to the site - a significant reduction as compared to an equivalent-sized concrete building, which would have required some 700 deliveries just to build the frame.  This reduction in deliveries is an additional benefit of CLT says Lomax: “Not only can we build sustainably, not only can we build to an incredibly high quality we are also really excited about being neighbourly too.”   Above: The completed building is clad in brick, giving it a familiar appearance (image courtesy of Daniel Shearin). Now complete, the building's timber structure has been fully clad in brick and is no longer visible, meaning that the block appears as a more traditional housing development. “In some sense we want CLT to become normal,” says Lomax. “And normal means normal materials, things that people recognise. They recognise brick elevations, they recognise steel balconies. So to us it’s not so much that we are keen to express the aesthetic of timber, it’s that we are keen to create buildings that our clients recognise, that they see as normal.” This normalisation is being felt throughout the industry says Damien Cartmell, managing director for construction at Regal Homes: “There is support for timber frame construction from both the Mayor of London and the Borough of Hackney and we worked closely with them to deliver this scheme in Dalston.” As developers realise the benefits of CLT we may see more timber housing in the future. Cartmell continues: “At Regal Homes we are committed to sustainable construction, delivering that through clever design and innovative construction techniques.”   Above: Brick facades and steel balconies give the building the appearance of a "normal" London housing block (image courtesy of Daniel Shearin). Waugh certainly believes that we will be seeing a lot more timber housing being built in London and other urban environments in the near future.  “Over the past 15 years of building with the material, we have realised that not only is this material sustainable, replenishable, but this building material also builds buildings beautifully,” he says. “It builds them quickly, it builds them inexpensively, it builds them quietly, it builds them with fewer deliveries to site, so it really is in terms of renewing our city, in terms of increasing the density of our urban environments, a fantastic material to work with.” "I think we should build every building over three storeys from solid timber, we shouldn’t be using concrete. Concrete is for foundations, roads and bridges" “I really see the use of CLT growing exponentially in the next few years as carbon taxes come to the fore, as issues around climate change become increasingly important, as energy becomes more expensive’” he continues.  “I think we should build every building over three storeys from solid timber, we shouldn’t be using concrete. Concrete is for foundations, roads and bridges,” concludes Waugh. You can learn more about what CLT is and how it is manufactured in our video.   Images courtesy of Waugh Thistleton, Jasson Rabbow and Daniel Shearin. We welcome you sharing our content to inspire others, but please be nice and play by our rules. 

London

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B&K Structures

<p>The landmark project demonstrates the potential of using sustainably-sourced timber to build high- density housing in London and beyond. The build achieved 3,576 tons of sequestered carbon and 976 tons of embodied CO2. Delivering a net carbon footprint of -2,600 tons CO2, CLT represents a vast improvement on the net carbon footprint of an equivalent block with a concrete frame, with an estimated +2,000 tons.</p>