Urban Nature - Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum in Central London developed their garden grounds with new buildings to create a campus with increased biodiversity, accessibility, and opportunities for education. With the addition of a visitors’ café and learning centre, the 654m² and 207m² buildings, respectively, provided new views of the rejuvenated garden and combined facilities for education, research and volunteering. These buildings, combined with landscaping and ponds, came together to form the Urban Nature Project.

Xylotek were subcontracted by Walter Lilly to design-develop, supply and install the timber structures for both the Café and Learning Activity Centre buildings. The importance to the client of using a specialist timber company for this project reflected their intention to facilitate the developments in a sustainable manner. The Natural History Museum’s new gardens and buildings opened to the public in 2024.

The design for the Learning Activity Centre consisted of the timber frame, studwork walls, purlins, beams, and roof. The main components of the structure were glulam and solid Douglas Fir. The key specification in the brief was to have visible timber beams which brought warmth to the space, with hidden steel connections between the timber elements. The connections were designed in a way that ensured all metal components would be hidden once the building was finished.

The Café Building was designed to align with the LAC in a similar aesthetic. A timber finish with a light whitewash was chosen to soften the intensity of the timber colour and homogenise the finished appearance. The Xylotek team used iterative design development to lay out the interfaces between the timber elements, masonry lintels and blockwork. It was important to coordinate these multiple membranes in order to create the whole building envelope. Bespoke connections using steel plates, hidden hangers, screws and bolts were employed to align with the brief.

Although the timber was not expected to change dimension in this environment, each material where it interfaced with another had a different specificity. This was due to the fabrication methods for each component – for example, the CNC’d glulam had slight differences to the solid Douglas Fir elements. These allowed the components to work together to create an integrated building.

Xylotek supplied the glulam Douglas Fir timber for this project primarily through fabricators Simonin, Arnold Laver, Metsa and East Brothers. The timber was all FSC or PEFC certified, meaning it was sourced and responsibly harvested with a net-zero loss of forest over time. This aspect of the construction – ensuring responsible sourcing of materials – aligned with the client’s values to keep the developments clean, green and sustainable.