Timber iQ August - September 2019 // Issue:45 | Page 22

PROJECTS
The Vortex under construction.
would produce a finish that was too light in colour, with a
more ‘yellowy hue’. The fact that the US produces red oak in
such volumes also played in its favour.
“Although there were still times, I was nervous about
whether we’d get the amount we needed in the time allowed,
and with the homogeneity of grain and colour required,” says
Jones. “We were asking an awful lot of the US timber
industry, but they rose to the occasion.”
The significance of red oak to the interior aesthetic is
obvious from the moment you enter the lobby. In fact, it
helps make the building’s dramatic opening statement.
The Bloomberg site under construction.
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AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2019 //
Called the Vortex, this dramatic swirling space features
1 858m 2 of red oak cladding on its intersecting
arching walls.
“The Vortex is a literal and metaphorical modern twist
on the timber-lined entrance hall you find in so many
classical English buildings, particularly in London,” says
Jones. This application is also one example in the building,
as he describes it, where innovation has overcome the
potential challenges of using wood.
“Having this much vertical cladding risked reverberation,
so the timber was micro-perforated by laser. This makes it
absorbent of sound, while the aesthetic is unaffected as the
holes are so small. You can’t see them until you’re about
20mm from the surface,” he says.
Red oak also features prominently in the multi-purpose
room, a flexible space for meetings and presentations
adjacent to the building’s auditorium. Here it is used in the
form of glulam, a total of 1 350m 3 , comprising the ‘fin
walls’ which define the space. The daring decision to use
timber for the flooring came out of a New York meeting
between Michael Bloomberg and Jones and posed perhaps
the biggest technical test.
“We were talking about possible flooring types and he
just asked, why can’t we use wood?” says the latter. “The
key reasons you don’t often see it in offices is footfall
noise - and there is capacity for just shy of 7 000 people
in the Bloomberg building - and the need to access the
services beneath. We wanted the aesthetic of a seamless,
monolithic surface, but using conventional tongue and
groove boards would cause huge problems getting to all
the communication cabling and other systems.”
Once more innovation overcame technical and
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