Tūranga’s Book Tree

Tūranga, the state-of-the-art national public library at Christchurch, designed by architectus in collaboration with Danish library design experts Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects, has received wide acclaim. One of the highlights of the library is the 4.5 metre tall Book Tree in the children’s area on the first level.

“We wanted to create a tree where books would hang and a special little space inside the trunk where children could hide or escape into their world of make-belief or be one with nature,” says architect Denis Olette who was responsible for the concept and idea of the Book Tree. The tree was also conceived as a symbol of an anchor or roots that go deep into the soil. In many cultures, communities gather under trees and share stories. Besides, trees also have a sense of magic in children’s stories says Denis.

Building the Book Tree was an incredible feat – from design to production every step involved complex detailing. Architect Sasha Samardziska, who worked on the drawing, says, “Every branch had to be numbered and individually curved to ensure smoothness in the design.”

A Christchurch-based joinery manufacturer was entrusted the task of putting the tree together. The idea was that each shape would be cut using a CNC machine. The complex shapes and angles would have to be perfectly aligned and fitted together to match the architect’s design. A problem arose when the CNC machine could not process the design files, which were drawn on Revit (a computer aided design application). The geometry was too detailed. In fact, the curved cuts on the heel around the inside came through with many tiny fragmented lines rather than 2-3 smooth arcs. So small were the lines that it created errors on the CNC machine and the data was too fine for tooling to be applied.

To resolve this problem, Megabits, the suppliers of Quantum CAD, a specialist joinery software package, was approached. Megabits’ QuantumCAD support consultant Brendan Balemi got to work immediately importing the Revit files directly into QuantumCAD. He then worked on each curve and arch to make the machining possible. Due to the sheer size of the tree, each element had to be broken into several parts. A single branch, for instance, had to be broken into 4 pieces. This was further complicated by the need to align the grain of the timber. The 389 resultant parts then needed to be individually aligned on sheets of plywood of varying thickness.

The combination of simplifying the curves of the original design in order to be accepted by the CNC and the need to align the grain while optimising the use of the many sheets of ply was a time consuming but ultimately successful task made possible by QuantumCAD and Brendan’s expertise!

Tūranga opened its doors over a year ago and it has had over a million visitors. The Book Tree remains one of the main attractions of the library.

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