Picnic table for cyclists wins Timbmet Dan Kemp Memorial Pavilion competition

A design for a picnic table that enables cyclists to pull up and remain on their bikes while enjoying a social gathering with friends has won this year’s Timbmet Dan Kemp Memorial Pavilion competition.

The competition was launched in 2010. Sponsored by TRADA and Timbmet, it is run in conjunction with Oxford Brookes School of Architecture and challenges students to explore the creative and structural possibilities of wood.

Ioana Bucuroiu and Jester Abayari’s winning design – dubbed Cycle Through Picnic – is described as being not only an eye-catching and innovative use of timber but a practical solution that can also be used by non-cyclists.

The judges were said to be particularly impressed with the concept and the design of the Cycle Through Picnic, which will now be scaled up to full size and exhibited at Ecobuild 2016, which starts this week.

This year’s undergraduates faced a challenging brief to design a structure to promote the St Pancras Yacht Basin’s Cruising Cub on the Thames towpath.

They had to design a pavilion type structure that expressed elements of the King’s Cross development and to act simultaneously as an ‘advertisement’ for the club community hub and as a temporary stopping place along the towpath.

It should also provide somewhere to pause, sit and look and learn about the proposals. Information about the new development will be displayed in the pavilion, views of the site will be framed and hints of the design explorations involved in the new proposal will be shown to the public and manifest in its very construction.

The runners up were Henry Blazey, Leonie Lindner and Natalie Laking with the ‘Block Chime Pavilion’.

TRADA’s university engagement programme manager Tim Belden said the breadth of interpretation of the concept in all the models was excellent, all of which were realised in the final designs.

“Many were of excellent quality creating an impressive display,” he said. “The judging of this competition is one of the highlights of the University Engagement Programme year and it is wonderful to see the enthusiasm and effort the Oxford Brookes students put in encouraged by their design tutors.”

The Dan Kemp Memorial Pavilion was established in memory of the “driving force” behind Timbmet and a leading light in the timber industry for decades. Timbmet has sponsored the competition for the last six years and the company is always impressed at the quality of the entries.

Nigel Cox, managing director, Timbmet, said: “Timber is such a versatile material, and we’re privileged to be involved in educating the next generation of architects about the material’s possibilities. The next challenge is with the Timbmet team as they bring the winning design to life.”