Timber rises in Clerkenwell

Construction is now underway at Xylo, the UK’s largest full-timber-frame workplace.

On Clerkenwell Road, the first engineered-timber components are beginning to rise – marking a significant moment for a project designed to challenge the way London workplaces are made.

Xylo will provide 97,000 sq ft of naturally different workspace across nine storeys. But its story begins well beyond the site boundary, in sustainably managed Austrian forests.

Here, spruce is carefully selected and taken to specialist facilities, where it is transformed into the components that will form Xylo’s structure. At one factory, timber is laminated to create the glulam beams and columns. At another, cross-laminated timber (CLT) slabs are precision-manufactured for each floor.

Every element is designed, cut and prepared off site before making its way to Clerkenwell – ready to be assembled with remarkable accuracy, floor by floor.

The result is a highly engineered structure: a glulam frame with inverted-tee, wide and shallow ‘super-beams’ supporting CLT floor slabs. Together, they will form Xylo’s nine-storey spruce-timber frame.

This approach is not only visually and materially different. It is also a smarter way to build.

Much of Xylo’s construction is completed before components arrive on site, helping to minimise waste, reduce site activity and bring greater certainty to the programme. The façade will be made predominantly from large precast-concrete panels, supported from the timber frame at each floor – maximising off-site manufacture and delivering significant programme efficiencies.

There is something extraordinary about watching the structure rise. A material grown in a forest, shaped with precision and delivered to the city, becoming a workplace designed for the next generation.

Follow our progress as the timber frame rises in Clerkenwell.