Our client, a close friend of the practice, lives in a Grade II listed house with frontage onto the River Cam. The timber structure has been constructed to house their motor launch, its simplicity underpinned by the use of no mechanical fixings, screws, nails or bolts.

Clad in a copper roof, the frame takes influence from ‘Sashimono’ and ‘Kumiko’ techniques of building furniture utilising both simple and complex wooden joinery without the need for nails. A repeating structure that minimises the variety of joints, standard timber sizes and pre-fabrication before moving onto site has aided in reducing embodied carbon. Each timber member was carefully marked, assembled and raised over a long weekend between a motley crew of friends.