Acting as a sun screen, it keeps the building cool and energy efficient. The wooden exterior also has some practical benefits. Anders Berenson finds this a useful feature given that the skyscraper will be the highest in the city centre of Stockholm. From the outside, people will be able to identify the floors by reading the exterior, composed of wooden numbers. The CLT facade of the new skyscraper will be a continuation of the numerical pattern that Asplund designed. The most recognisable feature of the building is its facade with a pattern of numbers indicating floor levels. The old car park called Parkaden was designed by architect Hans Asplund and is a characteristic landmark in the city centre. The seven floors inside the existing car park will be best suited for retail and restaurants. Of the 33 floors that protrude above the existing car park, 31 floors will be residential and the remaining two floors will be public terraces. To retain the original facade, the new skyscraper has been designed to only occupy a portion of the interior, six metres away from the car park walls. Plans for two such buildings were announced in the last week: the first, in Switzerland, will be 328 feet (100 meters) tall and made entirely of timber. Trätoppen will be 40 storeys high and built out of cross laminated timber (CBT). The height of the skyscraper addresses the problem of urban density by creating space vertically for housing, shops and restaurants. The motive behind repurposing the old car lot is to reduce the number of cars in the city centre while simultaneously making urban space available for more housing, which would otherwise encroach on green areas. In response, the architecture firm came up with Trätoppen (Tree Top in English) – a slender wooden skyscraper positioned in the middle of the lot to leave the existing car park facade intact. The W350 Project may be the most recent endeavor to bring wood to new heights, but it certainly won't be the last.Swedish architectural firm Anders Berensson Architects was recently commissioned by the Stockholm Centre Party to design a skyscraper that could replace an old car park in the city’s centre. If managed properly, wood could become an accessible, practical building material for large-scale construction projects. "Maintaining a mix of forest habitats and tree densities in non-reserved forests would help preserve the varied biodiversity in ecosystems worldwide." "Harvesting also reduces a forest’s likelihood of suffering a catastrophic wildfires, and improves its ability to withstand it," wrote the authors in the 2013 study. Those worries are unfounded - less than 1 percent of the world's forests are harvested annually. "What about deforestation?" you would ask. Wood is RenewableĬompared to steel and concrete, wood is renewable because we can simply grow more timber. The wooden skyscraper is a multi-purpose building, comprised of residential areas, a hotel, and restaurants. While the W350 Project is expected to cost twice as much as an ordinary building, Sumitomo is confident that technological advances between now and 2041, when the building is expected to be complete, will drastically reduce that number. And again, because it's lighter, builders can move a lot more of it for the same cost. In some cases, the material known as mass timber is even being used to construct. Wood is Cost-EffectiveĬross-laminated timber costs about the same as concrete and steel. Builders are increasingly turning away from concrete and steel in favor of wood. The production of typical construction materials, like steel and concrete, accounts for 16 percent of global emissions, according to a 2013 study published in the Journal of Sustainable Forestry. By switching to wood, we could reduce the emissions from the construction industry by up to 31 percent, according to a study from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.Īnd because wood is lighter and easier to transport than steel, it requires fewer fossil fuels to transport it, further reducing emissions. So why build skyscrapers out of wood? We can think of a few good reasons. But it's not just the availability of the new material that makes it so appealing. Most regulations around the world require wooden buildings to be no higher than four stories, but here comes Vancouver-based architect Michael Green into the picture with a novel, some would. Looks pretty stunning! Image credit: Sumitomo Forestry The W350 Project isn't the first of its kind - other architects in cities all over the world have been toying with the idea of using wood as the main component for skyscrapers.
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