Roundhouse Works is a creative centre designed specifically for young people. It’s an impressive project all round, which takes a hybrid structural approach by using cross-laminated timber (CLT), glulam and concrete to provide a range of different spaces. But the most novel aspect of the Roundhouse Works story is what’s on the outside: it is clad with railway sleepers.

Each sleeper is optimised, in terms of making the most of the wood they provide. They are chunky blocks, and it became clear that if the faces were cut off then each sleeper could go further. Wider boards were used in some areas of the façade; and the thinner offcuts were used in others. There is also a pleasing contrast in colour to the sections that used the virgin timber from the middle of the sleepers.

The marks from its former life add character. You can tell which were the bottom and which the top of the sleepers

The boards are fixed to hardwood battens on an aluminium helping hand system, fixed to the building’s CLT structure.

After the sleepers were delivered, Reed Watts sent off a sample from one of them to be lab-tested for petrochemicals, just to make sure that the sleepers were indeed free of any flammable treatments – many railway sleepers in the UK have been treated for creosote and it was crucial that the Australian Jarrah wood sleepers were free of any such flammable treatments.

Download this sustainability study to learn more about this fascinating project, and view close-up photographs of the lived-in but sturdy cladding solution.

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• Carbon
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