Craypot features LVL

The Kaikoura District Council’s new HQ, in the South Island coastal town best known for seafood and whale-watching, is being built with a ‘craypot’ theme. Constructed entirely in timber, the three-storey building is the first in the world to utilise shear walls made of Cross Laminated Timber and Laminated Veneer Lumber.

The building will house the museum, library, commercial office space and the council offices. The walls of the post and beam gravity structure are CLT, but LVL, which is significantly stronger, was added to areas where there was maximum strain to provide added strength in each end and within the core of the walls where the largest post-tensioning strain is.

The ‘craypot’ concept will see half the building’s façade covered in an abstract timber craypot sculpture.