Life Project

Live projects are a leading educational initiative at the University of Sheffield School of Architecture. Architecture students work in groups on a 6 week Live Project with a range of clients including local community groups, charities, health organisations and regional authorities. In some cases the projects involve actual building, in others design of urban master plans, in others consultation exercises. In every case, the project is real, happening in real time with real people.

Project Brief

A project for Ecclesall Woods from locally sourced/recycled timber

Ecclesall Woods is ancient woodland within the city boundary. It has an old Sawmill site in the middle of it and there are exciting plans for developing a centre for the innovative use of timber in Sheffield.

The Sawmill site already has a number of small businesses and enterprises on the site. Over the past few years we have been building structures there that explore the use of both new local timber and recycled timber.

Last year the Forest School invited students to develop a classroom and the composting toilet and canopy from before that are still going strong. The project is about consultation with the communities that will use the new facility and designing and building an appropriate response to the need on the site.

This year the client Ted Talbot is very keen to encourage cyclists to the site and look at what facilities are needed for this. Students will chop down the trees they may use and there is skilled help on hand with working the timber.

Friday, 9 October 2009

07/10/09 - Testing techniques in the woods

We headed down t Ecclesall Woods bright and early to learn how to coppice trees in the "donkeyfield." Tom Jackson Hulme was suprised to find he'd chopped down the wrong kind of tree. Fortunatly it was already dying, he'd just put it out of its misery.

Once we had a decent stash of timber we headed back to the covered area of the saw mill to try our hand at a few basic jointing techniques, ways of cleaning the timber and we became aware of the challenge of using raw timber for a clean design aesthetic.

Will showed off his talent ripping bark from the wood on the shave horse.


While Ronan dazzled with his skills on the pole lathe.


As you can see some of the joints produced were a bit basic and rough and ready, but we came away with a bit of insight to help in the design process.







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