Wood Works ONIX

Wood Works Onix enthusiastically champions the beauty of the use of wood in architecture. The sustainable quality of timber means it is the ideal ecological material. The diversity and versatility of wood makes it possible to construct contemporary buildings that are in harmony with the existing surroundings as well as pleasant to use, and they can be flexibly altered over time. Wood is pivotal in the highly varied but coherent oeuvre of the Onix architecture bureau, which runs offices in Groningen, the Netherlands and in Helsingborg, Sweden. The bureau designs and builds a diversity of projects, including housing, bridges, barns, schools and offices, in the Netherlands and beyond. The bureau has gained international esteem for its deliberate combination of timber with unusual and striking concepts, a highly distinctive interpretation of traditions and its deployment of innovative techniques. Wood Works Onix offers the expertise and experience of studying, developing and realizing timber structures over a period of some 15 years in what the bureau terms ‘thoughtful’ architecture. Detailed drawings, sketches and photographs of the construction process for more than 20 architectural structures showcase the bureau’s never-ending quest for novel applications for wood. The book also illustrates how the Onix architects assay their ideas in experimental installations, for which huts, nests, branches, tree trunks, pallets and crates are the source of inspiration. The Onix architects reveal their love for wood as a material, spanning from their childhood memories of forests to the pleasure they derive from using timber for their buildings today.