The three-storey timber Pavilion at IQL designed by ACME houses a café, brasserie and restaurant as well as a roof terrace open to the public and the visitor centre of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. We were tasked with the planning, production and erection of the facade of the Free Form Pavilion.
As the sole timber structure, the Free Form Pavilion has formed the beating heart of the International Quarter London (IQL) urban development project since February 2020. The planners opted for timber as a building material due to the short construction time and because a train tunnel runs under the site, which necessitated a lightweight building. Spruce was used for the building structure. A substructure of stainless steel supports the facade, which is made with Accoya wood and serves to provide both shade and ventilation. A welcoming stairway gives access to the roof garden.
The Pavilion is made with 100% prefabricated components. The Accoya timber facade boards – each between 1 m and 4 m long – are all custom-made. Precise planning and prefabrication of the individual facade boards in the factory required careful sorting for delivery to London. Thanks to this thorough preparation and the high degree of prefabrication, on-site assembly was straightforward and did not require any adjustments. As a result, the assembly team at the construction site simply needed to install the facade boards in the right place with the help of a manual and specific assembly instructions.