Keeping cities cool is a rising challenge, but the designers of a timber trellis structure set to debut at next month’s London Design Festival claims it will do exactly that – with the flourish of foliage
With temperatures rising and heatwaves set to intensify, coupled with dwindling biodiversity in cities across the world, there is an urgent need for a rethink in urban development, say the designers behind the Vert concept.
Vert is a modular timber structure that not only adds a decorative flourish to urban spaces, it’s claimed it will also serve to help keep them cool, as well as provide some living greenery to the build environment.
Devised in a three-way collaboration between Stefan Diez’s industrial design studio Diez Office, the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), and urban greening specialists OMCºC, the experimental proposition is due to be unveiled at the Chelsea School of Art during London Design Festival next month.
The project proposes a timber structure that helps to cool the city while integrating easily into its existing infrastructure. Tall sails covered in climbing plants work to fix carbon dioxide in the air while creating areas of cooling shade – sheltered spaces for people to pause.
Built from sustainable materials, Vert combines aesthetic appeal with tangible environmental benefits, and represents a transformative approach to urban development.
Constructed from an engineered hardwood, red oak glulam, the structure consists of a series of timber triangles holding suspended biodegradable nets. These provide a framework for climbing plants, rooted in textile planters at the base of each net.
The sails are greened with around 20 different plant species, creating a living ecosystem that enriches local biodiversity, serves as a habitat for essential insect populations, aesthetically enriches the urban landscape, and provides a sheltered space where visitors can gather and relax.
Stefan Diez, director and founder of Diez Office, said: “The structure performs as a ‘greening machine’, while also making urban spaces more harmonious and pleasant to live in from an aesthetic point of view. We wanted Vert to break the monotony of our urban environment.”
Robust, modular, flexible, sustainable
Over the last decade and a half, AHEC has presented a host of experimental structural projects that showcase innovations in hardwood, such as hardwood CLT. Vert continues this important work, this time focusing on highlighting the potential of red oak glue-laminated timber (glulam).
Having previously supported Diez in his teaching work, AHEC and the Munich-based designer began exploring the possibility of collaboration at 3daysofdesign in Copenhagen in 2023. For several years, Diez Office had been working with OMCºC on their urban-greening solution that would reduce the carbon footprint of the city in the process.
This is the role typically performed by trees, but in an era of acute climate change, climbing plants can be more effective as they grow many times faster, require less root space, and can be ‘harvested’ annually to be turned into biochar or recycled as raw material for the generation of energy.
The system combines AHEC’s timber knowledge with Studio Diez’s design expertise and OMC°C’s in-depth understanding of planting and irrigation technology, substrate performance, wind loads, and all the other technical details integral to the installation of the structure in public spaces.
Vert’s triangular shape is fundamental to the structure’s performance, allowing for a robust construction that uses minimal materials while being capable of resisting wind from all angles and absorbing the weight of the plants.
The triangle also lends itself to modularity, allowing for the system to be extended or to change in direction to suit different settings, without affecting the resistance of the structure.
In consultation with AHEC, Diez Office and OMCºC were able to identify red oak as the optimum material to use for the project, in terms of both structural performance and ecological credentials. Diez Office has been enthusiastic about the aesthetic possibilities and environmental benefits of red oak since learning about the species.
Since then, the studio has experimented with the timber, first as a furniture material, then, after recognising its structural potential, expanding its application to larger scales in collaboration with OMCºC and the wider construction team.
The expertise of structural engineers Bollinger + Grohmann and the Swiss company Neue Holzbau, known for its innovation in engineering and manufacturing complex timber structures, proved invaluable in this process.
Despite red oak being sustainable and constituting a sizable 18% of North American hardwood forests, it is underused in Europe, says AHEC. Increased use of red oak would reduce the stress on more widely used species and provide designers and customers with an “enriched palette” of timber materials to choose from.
Because red oak is denser and more stable than the standard construction timbers, less material is said to be required, minimising the visual prominence and footprint of the structure while maintaining high structural performance.
Red oak
The use of red oak also allows for more precise and long-lasting joints that enable the structure to be disassembled, moved, repaired and/or reassembled many more times than standard construction materials, supporting the longevity of the piece.
David Venables, European director for AHEC, said: “This proposal offered a tangible solution for urban greening, integrating sustainable materials and modular timber construction to create a multifunctional space. The idea perfectly aligned with our commitment to sustainability and our mission to highlight red oak’s structural and environmental characteristics, inspiring the design and architectural community to consider it as a valuable material option.”
The structure is predominantly made from red oak glulam – an engineered material created by finger jointing and laminating multiple grain-aligned layers of timber to enhance strength and stability. This enables the creation of large, structurally robust components suitable for modern construction.
Vert also features a decked floor beneath the sails made from thermally modified red oak. The chemical-free heat treatment alters the wood’s cellular structure, enhancing its durability and stability and increasing its resistance to decay and insect attacks, which makes it ideally suited to use outdoors in urban spaces such as this.
The case for sustainable timbers
As well as offering a potential urban-cooling solution, and acting as visually enriching street furniture, Vert is said to make a compelling case for the use of alternative wood materials to the limited library of species typically used in design and construction; encouraging greater diversity and resilience in the world’s forests.
Due to sustainable forestry practices, the standing timber volume of American forests has more than doubled over the last 50 years, AHEC claims. The forests provide critical habitats for wildlife, recreational spaces, and sources of economic growth for local communities. Their trees – and the products made from their timber – play a significant role in combating climate change through carbon sequestration.
AHEC believes that timber and design industries have important contributions to make in the battle against climate change. Vert’s use of red oak is said to demonstrate a valuable material option that gives architects a sustainable solution with great structural properties, while also tackling some of the most immediate impacts of climate change – specifically, rising temperatures and diminishing biodiversity in global cities.
The cooling power of climbing plants
Vert is projected to cool the surrounding airspace by as much as 8C, cast four times more shade than a 20-year-old tree, and produce as much biomass as an 80-year-old lime tree – all through the use of climbing plants grown over the course of a single summer.
Nicola Stattmann, director and founder of OMCºC, said: “The project is intended to inspire urban planners, architects and designers to address climate change and, above all, to work together to develop interdisciplinary solutions. We want to show that you can implement large-scale greening even on the highly sealed surfaces of inner cities.
“Our aim is to create a beautiful place for LDF: a cool, shady, flowering, rustling, buzzing place where you can be close to nature, a garden for insects and people in the middle of the city – somewhere that does you good.”
Vert will be on show at Chelsea College of Art throughout London Design Festival, 14-22 September, and will remain in place for four weeks.
Main image: A render of the Vert concept. Image courtesy of Diez Office
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