Architectural Timber Battens

There has been an increasing use of architectural timber battens in Queensland, and indeed Australia wide, over recent years and while they can certainly look excellent when first installed, they have the potential to be a maintenance nightmare. Following the failure of a high profile batten project where one fell to the ground, it needs to be recognised that there is the potential in a people occupied space for litigation. When researching the subject I came to the conclusion that while these concerns were valid, they did not have to be the accepted consequence of using timber. If some basic steps are taken it will result in a long lived feature that ages well even in tropical and subtropical architecture. The following chapters will take you through the issues involved in designing to achieve that end. I could find no books on the subject so, without the generous help of those I have acknowledged, this design aid for professionals would not have been possible. Most of the projects illustrated are from Queensland in Australia which the travel advertisements say is renowned for being "beautiful one day and perfect the next" (just another way of saying it is a harsh climate). Systems that work in the Queensland environment will perform better in cooler climates.