Timber Design
Accommodation Services in Cape Town

Timber home design. Timber architects and consultants.

We provide a specialist architectural service for new timber homes and projects. The principle of the firm, Jacques Cronje, is registered with the South African Council for the Architectural Profession (SACAP) in the category Prof. Senior Architectural Technologist. Some of you might think of, when thinking of using wood; of deforestation, or of the fact that it may burn? This is coupled with expanding economies (albeit slowly at present), causing the need for ever increasing resource extraction, and a growing population, with a housing backlog currently of 2.1 million houses in SA. So the question is; how do we meet, not just the South African, but worldwide need for housing? Concrete, steel and masonry are all great building materials, over that there is no doubt. So, with stats like 70% of the developed worlds populstion live in timber frame homes, why is the percentage of timber buildings so small in SA?; to grow the equivalent of anough wood for a twenty storey building, taking into account all of the forest areas of the US, will take effectively only 13 minutes. We had just short of 120 respondents, of which 38% had previously or currently still, lived in a timber home. What was most interesting to me was how the responses of those who had, and hadn’t actually lived in timber homes, compared on average for the same questions. So, not only was the maintenance of timber homes not seen as higher than a brick homes on average, but is was even less of a concern to people that had lived in timber homes. There are also cost savings on steeps sites, by using suspended floor structures. From our side, along with the ITFB, there is a continuous drive to increase awareness of the benefits and to promote timber frame as a building method. Nature has, after all, provided us with an option we seem to have forgotten about, a perfect building material that we can grow, harvest, re-grow and use in perpetuity. Another example is the Millwood House, now a museum in Knysna. An example of a remaining timber clad building from that era is the Woodcutter’s Cottage, built in the 1880’s, on display at the George Museum. After that era of timber frame building, iron clad timber frame buildings fell out of favour with the local authorities, and a period followed when they were all but completely outlawed. The majority of timber homes at the time, however, were relatively inexpensive holiday homes built along the Southern Cape coast, many of which were prefabricated. In 1982, some members of the timber building industry got together to form the Timber Frame Builders Association, now called the Institute for Timber Frame Builders, which went a long way in achieving the recognition the quality timber buildings enjoy today, particularly with regards local authorities and lending institutions. Should we not just continue doing things here as we allways have, building most buildings out of bricks and mortar? We had just short of 120 respondents, of which 29% were in the design or architecture field. What was most interesting was that 38% of the respondents had previously or currently still, live in a timber home.- and clearly wanted to share the advantages. My guess is that is that, as the pressure on resources increases, the efforts to slow down global warming escalate, energy costs escalate, along with the ever increasing technologies, there will be a shift.