The Smile

Architect Alison Brooks has created a structure of cross-laminated timber mad of Tulipwood. She was given a brief by client AHEC (the American Hardwood Export Council) to produce something that exploited the properties of tulipwood cross-laminated timber (CLT). Alison came up with the concept of a beam that curves up at both ends. The CLT tube is an inherently strong shape, in the same way that a steel tube is. The curve means that it cantilevers from, effectively, a single point in the centre. There is an opening at either end offering views out. Visitors walk up the slope of the curve to enjoy this view, encountering a glass balustrade with a handrail to it that Brooks describes as ‘rather like the rail of a ship’. It offers, Brooks says, ‘quite an unfamiliar spatial experience. It has a playful quality – between a landscape structure and a building. And it creates spaces underneath.’