Architect-trained Alex Thomas explains how he discovered making, why he set his heart on switching to it, and how he finally set up Timber Workshop
There is a tradition of timber framers working with architects to create beautiful and sometimes surprising timber structures. The best known have been Gordon Cowley and Charlie Brentnall who died earlier in 2024, and founded first Carpenter Oak and later the more experimental Xylotek. As architects explore timber structures, driven by sustainability, who is taking on that mantle?
One-time architect Alex Thomas of Timber Workshop sees himself firmly in the tradition of Carpenter Oak. How he switched and why also tell a story of architecture and making. But first let’s visit his workshops.
Down country lanes, close to the widening waters of Devon’s Dart Estuary, the frames for geometric puzzles by De Matos Ryan, dramatic exposed structures for Feilden Fowles and a disarmingly simple house by Hugh Strange Architects have been prefabricated over the last seven years. So far they have been up to two storeys high, primarily in Douglas fir, exposed and with invisible joints. This is the sort of prefabrication that those in favour of modern methods of construction might not immediately give their seal of mass market approval, but it gives buildings a structural grace and ensures that the lives of the makers are not mired in mud and rain far from home.
I arrive mid-morning, as Timber Workshop’s team take break, lunchboxes and thermos flasks interspersed with gentle conversation. A metal ruler is ready for action in the pocket of Thomas’ shorts above tanned legs and sturdy boots. He exudes a quiet vigour. Today three others are here: Mike Dandridge, a veteran of Carpenter Oak, Will Wheeler, engineer-trained and ex-Structure Workshop, and Izzy Stone-Wilson, previously of Asif Khan Architects. The drawings, once by Thomas himself, are produced now by an architect-colleague working remotely.
The warm culture of this varied group reflects Thomas’ own background. His Part 1 was at the University of Cambridge, alongside Fergus Feilden, later of Feilden Fowles. His third year in Tom Emerson’s (6a) studio got him into large-scale models and construction. Studying under Florian Beigel and David Grandorge at London Met for his Part 2 he had a chance to work on a couple of hands-on constructions. He’s worked for Buschow Henley, van Heyningen & Haward and Eric Parry Architects – and then three and a half years at Feilden Fowles. It was from here he went to Uganda, contributing to a school build with Charlie Brentnall and Henry Russell for the Feilden Foundation. It was a galvanising experience: working on a reciprocal-framed school hall, looking out over a lake.
‘It was exciting,’ says Thomas. ‘The speed of architecture is slow. This had the speed of making with noise, machines, people talking – and not just a person on the phone. I wasn’t bored at Feilden Fowles, but I might say I was bored of the screen. You get that 3pm slump… I don’t have that now.’
That doesn’t mean it was an easy decision. ‘Architecture was something you train for and take on thousands in debt to do.’ He tested out how he might change course, first of all without burning his architectural boat. With Brentnall and architect Piers Taylor he spent a summer building the Big Shed at the Architectural Association’s Hooke Park and saw the build through. He built a structure at WOMAD Festival. He lived in a treehouse outside Stroud: ‘I pursued all leads to find a way in. I didn’t come from a construction background so I had to build experience.’
Then 13 years ago he got a carpentry job in Devon and moved to Dartington, near Totnes, with his partner. He could work on projects rooted in traditional post-and-beam construction with some joinery thrown in. More modern timber construction with commissions from architects required hidden connections with more mechanical fasteners, or screws, bolts and concealed hangers, perhaps using more resin. He preferred the craft of Carpenter Oak which was at the forefront of reviving traditional timber framing in the 1980s and 90s, using green oak that is still workable and so inevitably irregular. And he was being pulled into the office, as he could do a building regulations package. ‘My architectural training was like an albatross around my neck,’ he says.
When he landed a job at Carpenter Oak in 2013 he negotiated a year in the workshop before moving to the office. He stayed in the workshop. Here was something special, a place where the eye of a carpenter might adjust where the connection goes to work with the timber and the cut. In his three short years there he worked on a new cloister for Hexham Abbey, and the colonnade and turned columns of Coastal House overlooking the River Dart, by 6a. And on plenty more ‘incongruous’ extensions to quite ordinary houses. He admits he was a bit of timber snob about such projects.
On the side he worked on Feilden Fowles’ London studio, enjoying the flitch plates, dowel connections, housed purlins and bolts. Elegantly restrained, its internal rhythm and simplicity sets a template for how the space is used. When the opportunity came to work on a barn for Waterloo City Farm with the practice for charity Jamie’s Farm he broke away and set up his own company. This ‘barn’, which Timber Workshop prefabricated then built on site, sings out in the city as a celebration of timber structure.
Back in Devon, resting on 21 trestles, paired Douglas fir beams with plywood packers are ready to travel to site. Each has been finished and sealed here, with knots resin-secured and the side with the fewest knots selected as the primary face. Alongside the trestles, huge vacuum nozzles suck up sawdust through oversized tubes in the ceiling to a hopper outside; a local farmer collects it to use as bedding.
Elsewhere a series of angled holes are drilled into timber, as the team tests which router and forstner bits give the cleanest, crispest entry into the timber. There are calculations on each, depending on the timber specification; cheaper, less dense, faster-growing timber can most easily splinter and look scruffy. Meanwhile, on kiln dried timber, the team will calculate whether to spend an hour sharpening the forstner bit or buy another bit at £150.
These angles are for one of the three timber frames at the Ucheldre arts centre in Holyhead by De Matos Ryan – the workshop’s second project with the practice after The Alice Hawthorne pub in Yorkshire (a Wood Awards winner in 2021). Its complex geometry demands a compound steel joint but due to a compressed programme the steel won’t get to Timber Workshop for the roof to be laid out in the workshops and connections tested, so they are making do with just two dimensions. The installation will rely on Timber Workshop’s accuracy, with very little plumb or level. Still the five weeks in the workshop should mean only two weeks on site, a bit more with travel. ‘Our aim is as little time on site as possible,’ says Thomas. Do the most you can out of the wet, with all the equipment on hand.
In one corner of the workshop rest two, 2m long plywood mega-spanners. The challenge isn’t always geometry. It can be sheer scale. On Skinner’s Hall, a project with 6a, the 700kg beams were too heavy to move without help from these spanners. And when it came to site the challenges were all about the crane and access for the installation through the scaffold in the City of London.
In the second workshop components for the glulam frame for a Buckinghamshire restaurant (architect Softroom) are being finished. It is mostly Douglas fir going through the workshop. Before the war in Ukraine Thomas would sometimes advise on the use of Siberian larch. And oak is still an option with a variety of grades, so costs can vary enormously. But the workable Douglas fir is currently most in demand from architects, sanded and oiled, or occasionally unplaned and unoiled as for Hugh Strange’s Farmworker’s House.
Outside in the workshop yard are stacks of wood, over-orders that will go into the furnaces to heat the workshop. Talking about this – or different timber joints – you hear how Thomas’ hinterland of knowledge has shifted so strongly towards the world of timber. He describes how these rejected pieces are a result of the UK’s timber grading system for Douglas fir that is based on structure with no reference to visual appearance, so over orders have to be part of the way of operating (architect and client tolerance or not of knots also plays its part in this waste). Thomas gives another tiny insight into the timber industry, with a victim of UK grading: the importation of US ash for Timber Workshop’s The Acorn residential project in Devon, designed by Begent Architecture. There is no structural grade for ash in the UK, says Thomas.
The yard’s line of trestles is testament to a robust yet beautiful tradition of making in timber, and a hint of the next project waiting to happen. Thomas will be ready for it.