Wood In Architecture Issue 2, 2021

BIG PICTURE
Exploring
possibilities
ARCHITECT: UENOA (Fumie Horikoshi
and Yoshinori Hasegawa)
STRUCTURE ENGINEER: Masahiro
Inayama, Holzstr; Ken Kamachi, KMC
LANDSCAPE DESIGNER:
SfG landscape architects (Akihiko Ono)
CONSTRUCTION:
HAKKOH Construction Co., Ltd
SITE AREA: 2,407m 2
BUILD AREA: 633m 2
TOTAL FLOOR AREA: 834m 2
PHOTOGRAPHY: Hiroyuki Hirai
1
Located in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan,
SYNEGIC Co., Ltd., a structural screws
manufacturer for wooden buildings, wanted
to expand on the possibilities of wooden
structure for its new office building.
timber (CLT) panels. By adopting a CLT
panel to fasten the flat trusses, complicated
processing of joints and joining by hardware
are avoided as it enables pre-cutting and onsite
screw joining.
Designed by UENOA, the result is a mix of
various areas under the roof of the 18m
wooden large span trusses, which allowed an
open plan office to improve communication
and collaboration between employees.
The roof frame touches the ground at four
points on each end, with no pillar in the
interior, creating a large space. By following
the topographical and keeping the floor level
with a dynamic roof frame, visitors can feel
the spatial continuation of the frame.
The three-dimensional roof shape is formed
by connecting flat trusses made of laminated
timber along with triangular cross-laminated
In addition, the heavy CLT panels, generally
used for walls and floors, is used on the
roof which present a new way of using the
material.
The CLT is also used as a partition wall that
bears as a vertical load on the first floor. In
fact, the texture of the CLT surface is made
to look like a marble and is joined with
screws with consideration to the design and
workability.
Through these ambitious processes, it
was possible to realise a large CLT wall
in the atrium that has no modules while
emphasising the wooden texture.
26 WOOD IN ARCHITECTURE • ISSUE 2 – 2021