Timber Pavilion Jury Panel

Buildner is pleased to announce its jury for the Timber Pavilion competition!

Alison Brooks, Alison Brooks Architects
Sam Brown, O’DonnellBrown
Jan Clostermann, CLOU architects
Katsuya Fukushima, FT Architects
Aaron Forrest, Ultramoderne
Soomeen Hahm, SoomeenHahm Design Ltd
Hanif Kara, AKT II and Harvard Graduate School of Design
Jürgen Mayer H., J.MAYER.H und Partner 
Hans Jakob Wagner, University of Stuttgart

Alison Brooks is Principal and Creative Director at Alison Brooks Architects. She is one of the UK’s most highly awarded and internationally acclaimed architects. A native of Guelph, Ontario, she studied architecture at the University of Waterloo before moving to the UK in 1988. Since founding her practice in 1996 she has emerged as one of the UK’s most inventive architects with works encompassing urban design and housing, higher education buildings, private houses and public buildings for the arts. She is the only UK architect to have received all three of the profession’s three most prestigious architectural awards: the RIBA Stirling Prize, the Manser Medal and the Stephen Lawrence Prize.

Alison Brooks’ unique architectural approach springs from invested research into specific geographies, climate and cultures of each project so that her design solutions to emerge as both unique and relevant to the constituencies they serve. This is beautifully exemplified by her recently completed Cohen Quadrangle at Exeter College, Oxford. The first Oxford College to be designed by a female architect, this building demonstrates the conceptual rigour, sculptural quality and ingenious detailing that is her practice trademark.

Sam Brown is co-founder of Glasgow-based O’DonnellBrown. ODB is a growing studio with a strong social conscience and a mission to bring about positive change. Sam oversees projects of various scales throughout the UK, including large-scale housing, commercial refurbishment and extension, master planning and education schemes. He also manages all areas of the practice. Prior to founding the studio, he was architecture team leader at the London Borough of Tower Hamlets for seven years. There he was responsible for all projects, involving coordination, design management, client liaison, dispute resolution and consultant appointments, as well as project liaison, cost management and contract administration. During his time at Tower Hamlets, he also fulfilled the role of Client Design Advisor, attending regular project meetings to comment on design, check drawings and technical details, advise on any direct design queries and how best to resolve obstacles.

Sam is also actively involved in architectural education, having filled the roles of Associate Lecturer, Study Support Tutor and Professional Practice Examiner at Central Saint Martins in London, and more recently as Studio Design Tutor at the University of Strathclyde. He currently teaches at Glasgow School of Art as a Studio Design Tutor. Sam has lectured around the UK at various education institutions, conferences and events and is also a judge for the Glasgow Institute of Architects’ annual design awards.

Jan Clostermann is the Founding Director of CLOU architects in Beijing, China. In the past 20 years the award-winning architect has conceptualised and delivered numerous high profile mixed-use and retail projects. CLOU architects is leading a new generation of creative yet commercially minded designers who promote architecture’s power to connect people.

Aaron Forrest is a registered architect and co-founding Principal of Ultramoderne. He received both his Bachelor's Degree and Masters in Architecture from Princeton University. In addition to co-leading Ultramoderne, he is Associate Professor of Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. He has extensive professional experience, having practiced in New York with Bernheimer Architecture and Guy Nordenson and Associates Structural Engineers, and in Madrid with Ábalos & Herreros Arquitectos. His background strongly informs his interests in the relationship between structure, tectonics, and architectural space.

Katsuya Fukushima is the founder of the Tokyo-based architectural office FT Architects. His office has been involved in numerous projects in Japan and has won the AIJ Award in 2015 with “Timber Structure I and II”. He is currently a professor at Tokyo City University.

Soomeen Hahm is the founder of the London based office SoomeenHahm Design Ltd. She is also a design faculty and a robotic researcher at SCI-Arc. Soomeen’s most recent work is on the use of Augmentation to execute complex and digitally generated creative forms by integrating machine intelligence and human craftsmanship.

Professor Hanif Kara is a practicing Structural Engineer and Professor in Practice of Architectural Technology at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He is recognized for linking design, research, education and practice. He co-tutored a Diploma Unit at the Architecture Association, London from 2000 to 2004 and was a Visiting Professor of Architectural Technology at KTH Stockholm from 2007 to 2012. As Design Director and co-founder of AKT II (est. 1996), his particular ‘design-led’ approach and interest in innovative form, pushing material uses, sustainable construction and complex analysis methods have allowed him to work on numerous pioneering projects at the forefront of many challenges facing the built environment.

Jürgen Mayer H. is the founding partner of J.MAYER.H und Partner. After studying architecture at the University of Stuttgart, The Cooper Union New York and Princeton University, he founded his Berlin office in 1996. J.MAYER.H und Partner is a renowned architectural practice working at the interface of architecture, communication design and new technologies. In cooperative teams, multidisci-plinary spatial research on the relationship between body, nature and technology is developed and reali- zed, from installations to urban planning designs and competitions. J.MAYER.H has realised a wide range of different projects worldwide. Recent notable projects include the parking garage in Miami Design-District, the FOM university building in Dusseldorf, Germany, a court building in Hasselt, Belgium and various public and infrastructural buildings in Georgia, such as the airport in Mestia and the border crossing in Sarpi. The most prominent project is the internationally renowned Metropol Parasol, the re- design of the Plaza de la Encarnacion in Seville, Spain with its expansive sculptural wooden construction.

Hans Jakob Wagner is a research associate and doctoral candidate at the Institute for Computational Design and Construction, University of Stuttgart. He has a special focus on advanced computational wood building systems and associated robotic production systems and -processes. He is working on his dissertation titled "Project-based Robotic Timber Construction: A framework for the integrative co-evolution of building- and automation systems in computational wood construction" and core projects within the DFG Cluster of Excellence IntCDC. 

The first annual Timber Pavilion is a celebration of timber as a building material. Competition participants are tasked with choosing a site for a temporary timber pavilion that would function to showcase an exhibition about timber as a construction material. The pavilion should not exceed 50 m2 and the contents of the exhibition should be included in the submitted designs. The competition is part of Buildner’ Small Scale Architecture Appreciation Movement showcasing small projects that contain big ideas.