For anyone thinking of building a low-carbon office, there is a dilemma to resolve. Timber is a good choice for a structural frame due to its lower embodied carbon; better than steel or concrete. But wood is not as strong as traditional materials, so the structural members need to be bigger, eating into valuable lettable space.

这在伦敦市中心这样的高房价地区尤其不受欢迎。人们对防火性能有负面的看法，尽管这比住宅建筑的问题要小，因为适用不同的规则。然而，这些问题并没有阻止联合办公和灵活办公空间专家The office Group在其第一个新建项目中使用木结构办公室。

It appointed specialist timber architect Waugh Thistleton to replace a former four-storey Office Group co-working space called the Black & White Building on Rivington Street, a narrow road fringed by former warehouses, restaurants and bars in the heart of Shoreditch. The £19.3m project, which bears the same name, makes the most of a constrained plot which is hemmed in on three sides by adjacent buildings to the west and rear and a railway line separated by a yard to the east.

The new building is a game of two halves. Its front half features a cutaway to get light into the lower floors on the west side and is five storeys high in order to avoid towering above its neighbours, while the six-storey rear section fills the width of the plot. A single-storey basement has been added to create more space.

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