Considering the return of wood to nature leads us on to the next key prediction, lifelong wellbeing. We must now be mindful of the entire lifecycle of the materials and building process and, beyond this, the health and wellbeing of those that work on and live in the buildings we erect. The World Green Building Council’s Six Principles for a Healthy, Sustainable Built Environment underlines the importance of the relationship between sustainable development and human wellbeing, detailing how harmony with nature and climate change action is linked to social values, including the health of construction workers.  Buildings made of wood have seen not only construction time, effort, and waste reduced by as much as 90%, but have had a positive impact on construction workers, whose exposure to the dust and toxic fumes of a regular building site is drastically lowered. Furthermore, timber buildings continue to have a positive impact on people throughout their lives as wood surfaces have been found to lower stress levels, improve attention and focus, and increase creativity. With the difficulty of the preceding two years, a movement towards design that benefits wellbeing is likely to be at the forefront of many minds.

Our final prediction is that net zero emission targets will no longer cut the mustard. With several governments and large companies committing to net zero targets, reducing emissions is a global target. However, with increasing pressure from those who recognise this may no longer be enough, we believe there will be a push towards climate positivity: removing more greenhouses gases from the atmosphere than are released. In an industry that is responsible for a large portion of global emissions, we think companies have started to notice the scale of the positive impact we could have if we pushed for these more ambitious targets.

So much attention is paid to the interiors of our homes, but the exterior is what makes the first impression. A beautifully designed façade enhances the architecture and sets the tone and feel of a home before guests even set foot inside. With its warm, natural appeal and virtually limitless design potential, wood cladding has emerged as a major trend in exteriors. Here are six of-the-moment ways to use it to give your property serious street appeal.

While standard wood cladding has its benefits, it’s not suitable for every project or homeowner, as it requires ongoing maintenance and can deteriorate over time. Today you’ll find innovative alternatives that provide all the warmth and natural appeal of wood, with minimal maintenance requirements and far superior durability. Accoya’s acetylated wood cladding can withstand even tough weather conditions, is resistant to rotting, and if left untreated will weather naturally to a beautiful silvery grey.

Accoya wood has impressive environmental credentials too. It’s fully sustainable, and every panel comes with FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certification. It is also 100 percent nontoxic, so you can have peace of mind knowing it’s a healthy choice for you and your family.

If you’re looking to make a statement with a bold exterior, consider giving your home the shou-sugi-ban treatment. This ancient Japanese technique involves charring the wood to preserve and strengthen it. The charring turns the wood a deep charcoal black while revealing its texture and grain. Not only does this wood treatment make for a striking façade, but it minimizes maintenance.

Natural appeal aside, wood cladding gives you endlessly creative ways to express your personal style. Take this three-story office building designed and occupied by architectural firm Dillon Kyle Architects in Houston, for example. It’s clad in 2,500 Accoya boards that have an abstract leaf-like pattern carved into the wood. The pattern references the oak trees that line the neighbourhood, and it adds not just texture and softness to the modern structure but a unique personal touch.

“The Accoya wood boards are unsealed and allowed to weather over time,” says Peter Klein, associate principal architect at Dillon Kyle Architects. “The idea was to use a material where you couldn’t tell where the patterns started and stopped — just one big continuous object.”

As the wood cladding would play a pivotal role in the look and performance of the building, the firm took their time choosing the right one. “Even left untreated, it didn’t warp or mildew or mould, and that let us know we were on the right path,” Klein says. “The neutral grey tones coupled with its long-term durability, resistance to rot and insects made Accoya wood the ideal material for this project.”

Running slender boards vertically, as the architect has done here, is a clever design technique for making a low roof or ceiling appear higher. You can use this strategy both outside your home with wood cladding and inside with wood wall lining.

If room height is not a concern, consider mixing vertical and horizontal patterns for added texture and interest inside or outside your home.

More: Learn more about Accoya’s range of sustainable, acetylated wood products by visiting our homepage here.

This story was written by the Houzz Sponsored Content team.

With the help of sustainable construction and the use of non-toxic materials, many future benefits are being realised. And here are just 5 of the great reasons why building sustainable stadiums promotes a healthier environment¹:

1. Water preservation: because a lot of water is needed in stadiums to water and prepare the real grass pitches, clean the venue or for sanitary reasons, water consumption in stadiums are very high. When considering how to reduce water consumption, green initiatives such as rainwater harvesting and recycling can be considered.
2. Energy preservation: in order to reduce the use of energy, more and more stadiums are being made to conserve energy consumption, and even being equipped with solar and wind power to provide them with an alternative energy source.
3. Low pollution: nowadays, more and more stadiums are built with healthier, more sustainably-sourced and recycled materials, such as wood, plastic and paper. With the help of using greener building materials that help fight global resource depletion, the amount of waste and pollution in the environment is reduced and the destructive impacts of construction are minimised.
4. Financial benefits: by choosing greener and longer-lasting materials for stadiums, environmentally-friendly projects will be
   cheaper in the long run when the maintenance and operation of the buildings are taken into account. Moreover, the value of the project can actually increase over time, while the costs of water, energy, maintenance and insurance premiums can decrease.
5. Reduced health risks to the community: using non-toxic materials can not only reduce health problems within the community, but also safety risks while stadia are constructed and in use for years after!

So now you have been introduced to world’s leading sustainable sporting stadiums, the real question is: How can you contribute to making a sustainable stadium?

As we know, many of the commonly used building materials are made of non-renewable resources, such as PVC or aluminium, which are finite, depleting resources, and often come with heavy energy and emissions costs. Every day, more and more pollution is released and CO2 is added to the surface air. However, our world can also provide us with raw materials that offer a long-term solution to both of these impacts: this material is wood, from well-managed and sustainable forests.

By specifying Accoya wood, you are already one step closer to helping build a more sustainable stadium by selecting it as your material for decking, cladding, windows and doors – frames or any other application. Accoya wood is sourced from fast growing trees and sustainably certified forests and offers many benefits to application-oriented industries around the world! Its high performance, unrivalled durability and sustainable credentials make it the perfect solution; a truly unique combination of qualities.

Thanks to our unique acetylation process, Accoya wood is highly resistant to decay – meaning it lasts and stores carbon for decades, making it a perfect alternative not only to carbon-intensive and resource-depleting materials, but also to slower-growing and unsustainably sourced hardwoods.

Just think about it. Who wouldn’t want beautiful installations from a material that has a longer lifespan while simultaneously increasing global carbon storage and providing us with a climate-proof alternative to concrete, metal and plastic, all for the sake of a more sustainable environment?

And don’t forget; you are opting for a premium product with exceptional stability that can easily last twice as long and require less upkeep than other alternatives – so in the long run the running costs can be much cheaper too.

Accoya wood may not be competing in the Olympics, but it has it’s very own Gold: Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Gold to be precise, marking it as the top performer in the building materials industry.

To give you some inspiration and ideas, let’s look at a couple of the few sustainable projects where Accoya has contributed to a more sustainable world by helping to build a greener sports stadium!

The outdoor velodrome, designed by Sander Douma Architects, was specified with Accoya wood for the 200m cycling track in Assen, the Netherlands, making it the perfect place for cyclists to train for their future cycling races while enjoying some fresh air.

The outdoor velodrome not only gives cyclists a feeling of freedom, but also creates benefits for the cyclists by giving them less resistance and more speed when cycling on the track. This is thanks to our unique modification process, which makes Accoya the perfect material for both internal and external applications of the sports stadium.

What happens at the end of its product life? Can the wood also have circular economy benefits?

As well as lasting for decades (and with a warranty for 50 years for above ground use), Accoya doesn’t contain any plastics or new elements that aren’t found naturally in wood: it’s biodegradable and can be handled in the same manner as raw wood at the end of life through recycling, composting or as a bio-based fuel source (as stated in the company’s KOMO product certificate and further evidenced by SHR – Wood Research Foundation Netherlands).  It can even be up-cycled into Tricoya wood chips, which are used to make high performance wood panels that can last decades more!

What about the transition to net zero economy?

At Accsys and through our flagship Accoya wood product, we believe that our actions and those actions of our customers can help contribute to one of the biggest challenges of our time – combatting climate change and the transition to a net zero economy.

Wood sequesters carbon, meaning that it captures carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and locks it in for its useful life, and the more durable and long lasting wood, alongside its use at end of life, can have a positive influence on the environment. Last year, our products locked in and safely stored around 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. This means that everyone involved in the process to use Accoya, from making and distributing it to the owner living with it, has helped take the equivalent of roughly 120 million miles of car driving emissions out of the atmosphere and store it safely in a useful, beautiful product.

I make no apology for listing my own company’s products here, Accoya wood and Tricoya (in the form of Medite Tricoya Extreme in the UK). Even if I wasn’t involved in these products I would have them on my list because they are such a great example of how we don’t necessarily need to compromise performance in our bid to use more sustainable products.

Photosynthesis is the best means we have of capturing carbon from the atmosphere and in the form of trees we have natural “production units” that convert it for us into a very versatile building material – wood. Using more wood in construction is vital as we aim for that carbon neutral target, yet so often specifiers choose carbon-intensive man-made materials that they have confidence in over wood because of concerns over the durability and stability of the latter.

Both Accoya (solid wood) and Tricoya (panels) are based on sustainably-grown timber which is tweaked at the molecular level by a chemical reaction called acetylation to vastly improve the performance of the wood in a non-toxic manner, thus locking in all of that sequestered carbon for decades longer than would otherwise be the case in products that are much more reliable and predictable than those made from un-acetylated wood. Both Accoya and Tricoya afford us the opportunity to significantly increase the amount of timber we use in construction without compromising on service life expectations or performance, even in challenging external applications.

There’s no doubt that COVID-19 has fundamentally changed the way we work. Although permanent home working is likely to be gradually replaced by a flexible hybrid office/home model as restrictions ease, there will still be thousands of us tapping away on laptops at home this year.  So, it’s no surprise that we’re seeing demand for garden offices soar as workers seek a quiet space outside away from the noise of the house.

Garden offices tend to be entirely separate from the house, fully insulated with heating and built for all weather conditions. Depending on space, they can range in size from a single person room to a fully kitted out office with a built-in kitchen and bathroom. Cheaper than a house extension, garden offices also come with significantly less environmental impact, particularly if built from or clad in sustainable timber.

Embrace the biophilic trend and celebrate your natural surroundings with an unpainted wood exterior. Add a clear coating to preserve the wood’s original hue or let it weather to a beautiful soft grey, as seen on this home in St. Joseph, Michigan. Its acetylated wood cladding pops against the black window frames and is low-maintenance, durable and resistant to rot, insects and fungi.

Acetylation is the process of modifying wood with a concentrated vinegar, “which makes it so that the wood doesn’t stay wet,” says Tim Svarczkopf, a technical manager at Accoya, a company that creates acetylated wood. It reduces the shrink and swell by 75% and allows Accoya to offer a 50-year warranty. “If the wood hardly swells and doesn’t rot for 50 years, the applications are virtually limitless,” Svarczkopf says.

Modern minimalist architecture, with its clean lines and simple colour palettes, continues to pop up in Houzz’s most-saved photos. Impressive use of volume, shape and contrasting materials — such as sleek metal and textural stone — adds visual interest and turns heads.

Acetylated wood decking brings visual warmth to the modern home in West Vancouver seen here, acting as a counterpoint to the expansive glass and rough concrete. While salt crystals may form on the planks, the coastal environment won’t have any effect on the wood itself, Svarczkopf says. The deck won’t splinter and can be enjoyed all year round with minimal upkeep. “Friends who use acetylated wood in coastal regions rave about it,” McBride says.

Mix contemporary and traditional styles for a new exterior look that’s all your own. “Sleek” and “simple” are the watchwords of this approach to help you avoid anything too mismatched. Think neutral hues, clean lines and minimal detailing. For example, consider one large picture window instead of multiple mullioned designs.

A modern addition imbues this shingled home in Bellport, New York, with fresh style while preserving its historic character. The new space features simple windows and charred acetylated-wood cladding, chosen for its durability and sustainability. Certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute, among others, the cladding is fully biodegradable. “The waste isn’t going to impact the environment, as opposed to cement board, vinyl or aluminium,” McBride says. Svarczkopf notes, “It’s also a very fast-growing renewable resource and a carbon-sequestering product. The fact that it lasts for so long and needs less maintenance enhances the life cycle benefits.”

This story was written by the Houzz Sponsored Content team.

To see the article on HOUZZ, please click here.

The entire structure of the building, including the external walls, is CLT timber combined with glulam columns and beams with Accoya external wall cladding. This project calculated to sequester 180 tonnes of carbon, which in terms of embodied energy, much more than offsets the transport from Austria.

Read more about the Christies Care Home project.

Designed by WilkinsonEyre, the village can accommodate up to 50 students with visiting staff. The high-quality and energy efficient living pods are prefabricated from cross-laminated timber (CLT), Accoya and other materials for rapid on-site assembly. Arranged in units and rising two to three-stories to create a welcoming social space to the campus alongside the larger industrial buildings.

Read more about Wilkinson Eyre Modular village project. 

Your home’s exterior says a lot about your style. Here’s a look at four home exterior trends we’re seeing.

1. Increased Use of Natural Wood

Home designers are increasingly using natural products like stone and wood – partly because they look good and partly because they want to use sustainable products. Accoya is made using FSC^® certified, responsibly harvested wood. It is also non-toxic and contains no harmful chemicals.

3. Using Texture to Make a Feel-Good Statement

One popular way to add texture and drama is with Shou Sugi Ban, a traditional Japanese art of charring wood. The process leaves a beautiful dark charcoal finish on Accoya that complements the wood grain. The practice is well-suited for cladding or siding options because it provides excellent durability that will stand up to the elements. You can use it all over your home, or just to create an eye-catching feature that will stand out from the rest of your home’s exterior.

The outdoor kitchen has been on the rise for years. Indeed in some circles, it is almost common to have one. Though why would an outdoor kitchen suit you?

The first reason is a simple one. Cooking indoors in the summer isn’t always pleasant when we have high temperatures. The second reason; it is much more fun to eat outside than inside. In the United Kingdom, this isn’t always possible due to our changing weather throughout the year but when you get the chance, you usually want to make the most of it. 

The materials of your outdoor kitchen must be able to survive well in all weather conditions. Scaffolding wood is a commonly used option but unfortunately not very durable due to its vulnerability to moisture. A more suitable material is Accoya wood or Medite Tricoya Extreme MDF board. This wood has been preserved through an environmentally friendly acetylation process so that it hardly shrinks or swells and has an outdoor warranty of 50 years against rot. This means that not only can you enjoy an environmentally friendly choice but your outdoor kitchen can be enjoyed by future generations. If you choose a countertop, then limestone is recommended for this. Granite is also a popular option (but more expensive). If you want to create a Mediterranean atmosphere, you can also opt for Portuguese concrete tiles. 

Traditionally charring timber until it turns to charcoal black was the only option but now manufacturers using this technology have broaden their range with added treatments/colours to achieve long lasting features. New techniques to enhance the timber’s aesthetics, offering traditional, highly charred black cladding, heavily textured looking timber in sleek and contemporary finishes is offering architects and designers the freedom to design whilst achieving the look and finish they desire.

See more charred Accoya projects here.

And have a look at where you could buy Accoya wood from today!

Shou Sugi Ban® is a registered Trade Mark in UK & EU owned by Exterior Solutions Ltd