WOOD WITHOUT TREES

Shetland museum revives Viking tradition

How can a sustainable building certification system that rewards a bike rack with the same number of credits as can be earned for using certified, carbon-storing wood throughout have any credibility with thinking architects, politicians or the public at large?

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The explanation lies deep within Shetland’s ancient maritime trade links with the Vikings and eventual colonisation by the Norwegians around the 9th century.

Visitors are confronted with this maritime connection and the timber tradition in the New Shetland Museum and Archives at Lerwick where a sixareen (descendant of the Viking longship) is suspended within the towering new Boat Hall at historic Hay’s Dock.

The widely acclaimed structure, with its ‘leaning’ timber-clad walls, was designed by leading British firm BDP and won the Gold Award in the recently announced 2008 UK Wood Awards.

Project architect Angus Kerr says BDP “champions the use of wood as a sustainable alternative to many modern materials and Shetland Museum is a fine example of its use in an innovative and successful way”.

The museum represents an important new cultural hub as well as a major new visitor attraction and landmark for these fascinating islands. The new 3,500 m2 building, which utilises old boatsheds, has five times the previous museum display space and three times the previous archive storage area. Facilities include the cafe restaurant, an Archives repository and search room, gift shop, boat restoration sheds, an auditorium seating 120, a learning room and a temporary exhibition space and administration, curatorial and conservation spaces.

Externally, the building form is largely derived from traditional early Shetland buildings – Lodberries, whose gable ends rise from the sea — and is constructed of traditional materials of harled masonry walls, timber windows and slate pitched roofs.

Contrasting with the traditional forms, the building’s presence is punctuated by the iconic timber-clad Boat Hall with its full-height slit windows. Conceived as four large inclined polygonal shapes, separated by narrow vertical glazed strips, their colour and form echo the sails of the herring drifters, which wintered in and around the Hay’s Dock in the last century.

The steel-framed structure is clad in prefabricated cassettes of Siberian larch, given a sawn finish externally to assist absorption of the timber stain that produced a distinctive match with the tarred sails of the herring drifters. Inside, the timber is sanded and finished in clear varnish. Flooring is reclaimed English oak boarding, the windows are timber and the restaurant furniture was locally crafted from reclaimed oak. The museum reception desk was sculpted from the salvaged keel of an 18th century sailing ship.

With the opening, some 3000 priceless artefacts from Shetland’s Viking past will be returned from the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.