Timber architecture

Timber architecture: reconciling performance, frugality and quality of use

In the face of environmental and societal transitions, the choice of materials has become a key component of architectural design. Timber architecture is emerging as a relevant response to contemporary challenges: it reconciles performance, frugality, and quality of use. An approach grounded in conscious, responsible solutions, rooted in a long-term perspective.

Timber: quality of use and adaptability

A natural and sensory comfort

Timber provides natural thermal and acoustic comfort. Its cellular structure regulates temperature variations. Its texture and presence create warm, welcoming atmospheres that foster well-being, attentiveness, and engagement. At the Maison d’Accueil Spécialisée in La Rochelle, the timber framework structures the living spaces and contributes to a calm and controlled atmosphere. Its thermal and acoustic qualities help ensure a stable indoor environment, essential for the residents’ daily comfort. Timber, present in the main volumes, brings a simple and natural materiality that enhances the legibility of the spaces.

Flexible and reversible buildings

Timber constructions are distinguished by their adaptability. Easy to modify, they can be extended, elevated, opened up, or reconfigured without compromising their structural integrity, thus supporting the evolution of uses over time. In this way, timber buildings align with the ambition of designing evolving architecture, capable of accommodating future and changing needs.

The Maison de Rodolphe project illustrates this timber-based construction approach. The project is built around a post-and-beam timber structure within which 15 m² three-dimensional CLT modules are inserted. These modules, fully assembled, equipped, and furnished in the factory, arrive ready to be installed. Their modular design not only enables very rapid implementation, but also allows spaces to be easily expanded by connecting several modules together. This flexibility offers an evolving, high-quality housing solution perfectly suited to the needs of residents.

A low-carbon material at the heart of the transition

Timber is a key bio-based material in sustainable architecture. It enables low-carbon construction thanks to its natural capacity to store CO₂, a responsible use of resources, and transformation processes that require little energy.
Its prefabrication also promotes shorter, less emission-intensive construction sites, thereby reducing disturbances and greenhouse gas emissions from the very building phase.

In the Lassagne school complex project, timber is one of the main drivers of the low-carbon strategy. It is used in timber-frame façades, cladding, wood-fiber suspended ceilings, and interior joinery. It integrates seamlessly into both new extensions and refurbished buildings. This choice supports an overall approach: limiting demolitions, enhancing the value of existing structures, and reducing carbon impact from the construction phase onward.

Thanks to its qualities as a bio-based material and to prefabrication processes, timber helps reduce emissions associated with construction while ensuring precise execution. It thus contributes to low-carbon architecture, in line with the project’s landscape ambitions, the creation of oasis schoolyards, and its environmental performance objectives.

Multidisciplinarity at the service of timber architecture

Timber architecture requires the combination of multiple areas of expertise: architecture, structural engineering, cost management, environmental quality (QEB), logistics, and prefabrication. Patriarche’s multidisciplinary platform is a key asset in designing high-performance, reliable, and well-controlled timber projects.

Three construction systems

Timber frame: lightness, precision, modularity

Timber framing is a thin, precise, and highly efficient construction solution. It allows for rapid implementation, excellent thermal and acoustic insulation, and great architectural flexibility. Its lightness makes it a preferred choice for extensions, vertical expansions, or interventions on constrained sites, while significantly reducing construction-related disturbances. Thanks to its modular nature, it facilitates the adaptation of spaces to uses, supports long-term flexibility, and optimizes prefabrication.

This is illustrated by the CROUS residence in Strasbourg, the first six-story building in France constructed entirely with timber framing. The building is based on the juxtaposition of prefabricated modules. Designed to support the development of work-study programs, the residence accommodates 200 studios of 18 m² for students, interns, apprentices, training staff, and visiting professors. These units are based on Dhomino®, a modular construction system that enables the design of reproducible, competitive housing adaptable to local specificities, without compromising on quality.

CLT and glued laminated timber (glulam): height, span, and stability

CLT is a technology that pushes the boundaries of timber construction: highly stable, strong, and designed to support significant loads. It makes it possible to envision multi-storey buildings, robust public facilities, and projects with high programmatic intensity. Thanks to prefabrication, it also ensures a high level of execution quality while reducing the overall construction time. Glued laminated timber (glulam), for its part, is ideal for creating large spans without intermediate supports: cultural and sports facilities, atriums, amphitheatres, workshops, and more.

It brings a structuring, authentic aesthetic that can become an integral component of the project. Its robustness makes it possible to design open, light-filled volumes, where the structure itself becomes an architectural language.

In the rehabilitation of the Breguet building at the Paris-Saclay campus, the central core volume plays a structuring role: its new hall is based on a timber structure designed to create large spans. The use of glulam and CLT makes it possible to open up a generous central space, conducive to circulation and multiple uses, without visual overload. Timber asserts a measured constructive presence, serving the clarity of the volume and the quality of use.

Hybrid structures: intelligent combinations

Combining timber, concrete, and steel makes it possible to harness the specific advantages of each material, particularly in addressing challenges such as fire safety, thermal inertia, acoustic performance, and seismic stability. This hybrid approach offers complete adaptability, aligning the project with its usage constraints, context, and environmental ambitions.

This is precisely the logic adopted for the Cambium project, whose design was guided by a construction strategy largely centered on timber, in order to minimize the use of high carbon-footprint materials. The building width, optimized at 16 m, makes it possible to refine the timber sections, while glazed surfaces and areas using concrete structure have been deliberately limited.

This ‘right material in the right place’ strategy enables the project to achieve a very low carbon footprint while maintaining a competitive cost of €1,700/m² (shell and core), thereby demonstrating the effectiveness and relevance of hybrid solutions within a more responsible architectural approach.

The NTN project transforms the historic industrial site of NTN-SNR into a new headquarters for NTN Europe, bringing together offices and laboratories in the heart of Annecy (74). Designed as a true showcase, the building stands out for its innovative and environmental character, thanks to a bioclimatic, efficient, low-carbon approach. This ambition is reflected in a hybrid construction combining timber and concrete, meeting both technical requirements and the future evolution of the site.

Using timber means choosing an architecture that is flexible, responsible, high-performing, and user-centered. At Patriarche, we integrate timber into a comprehensive approach, where every decision is grounded in analysis, engineering, and the pursuit of tangible impact.