Powerhouse Company has revealed a new design for Floating Office Rotterdam (FOR), the headquarters of the Global Commission on Adaptation (GCA). As the team states, construction will start this spring, and the all-timber project will be both energy-neutral and self-sufficient. The GCA will be housed in the Rijnhaven in Rotterdam for a period of 5 to 10 years.
Since time immemorial humans have constructed their shelter and homes using wood. Gradually these structures grew more complex, but wood has continued to play a fundamental role in architecture and construction. Today, especially due to growing concerns about climate change and carbon emissions, wood has been regaining significance as an important building material for the future, if used consciously and sustainably. Wood’s structural performance capabilities make it appropriate for a broad range of applications—from the light-duty repetitive framing common in low and mid-rise structures to the larger and heavier, often hybrid systems, used to build arenas, offices, universities and other buildings where long spans and tall walls are required.
Henning Larsen has created a proposal for Copenhagen’s first all timber neighborhood. Made for Fælledby, the plan includes 40 percent undeveloped nature, aiming to illustrates how new developments can embrace environmentalist principles. The project would transform a former dumping ground site into a model for sustainable living, accommodate 7,000 residents in an entirely timber construction.
The world’s greenest football stadium, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects will be built in Gloucestershire, England after planning permissions were finally granted by the local council.
Wood is a very easy-to-work material, allowing professional and amateur builders to manufacture simple objects and structures without major problems. However, when thinking about larger-scale housing or buildings, it's important to take certain precautions that ensure good quality and good construction behavior. To this end, it's essential to evaluate every project and analyze which connection system best suits its structural and aesthetic needs.
We spoke with the experts of Simpson Strong Tie, a leading company in structural connectors, anchors, and fastening systems, to learn more about these topics. Here are six important lessons and tips for building safer and more resistant wooden houses and buildings.
Glued Laminated Wood (Glulam) is a structural material manufactured through the union of individual wood segments. When glued with industrial adhesives (usually Melamine or Polyurethane resin adhesives), this type of wood is highly durable and moisture resistant, capable of generating large pieces and unique shapes.
Tall timber buildings are on the rise. Design teams around the world are taking advantage of ever-evolving mass timber technologies, resulting in taller and taller structures. Building off our recent article exploring the future of high-rise buildings, we’re taking a deeper dive into new emerging timber technologies and the advantages of building taller with wood. This tutorial explores how to make tall timber structures a reality.
For some years now, wood has received an increasing amount of attention in the construction industry. With concerns raised about sustainability and the carbon footprint of buildings, new construction methods and innovative possibilities in the use of timber have developed rapidly. This interest in wood stems in part from its renewability, though this benefit is contingent on sustainable logging and the appropriate management of forests to be allowed to regenerate naturally. However, it is the versatility of wood that serves as the primary impetus for its widespread use. From boards, to beams, to floors, and even to thermal and acoustic tiles and insulators, wood can be used in several different stages of a single project and with different degrees of processing and finishing.
Across the globe, tall wood structures have begun transforming the world of skyscrapers and high-rise buildings, ushering in an important shift to an architectural practice that has traditionally been dominated by steel and concrete. Typically defined as wood-constructed buildings over 14 stories or 50 meters high, the past six years have seen over 44 tall wood buildings built or underway around the world. Notable examples include Michael Green Architecture and DLR Group’s T3 and Team V Architectuur’s upcoming 73 meter residential tower HAUT.
One of the most practical and functional spaces of any residential project is the kitchen. Its artificial surfaces – be it countertops, kitchen benches, or coverings – contain most of the space's equipment. Thus, it’s essential to build kitchens with the most resistant and hygienic materials. Aside from these requirements, it's also important to pay attention to aesthetics and profitability, while adapting the space to the dynamics of each family.
Concrete, an essential building material, has for decades offered us the possibility of shaping our cities quickly and effectively, allowing them to rapidly expand into urban peripheries and reach heights previously unimagined by mankind. Today, new timber technologies are beginning to deliver similar opportunities – and even superior ones – through materials like Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT).
To better understand the properties and benefits of CLT, we talked with Jorge Calderón, Industrial Designer and CRULAMM Manager. He discusses some of the promising opportunities that CLT could provide architecture in the future.
Choice of building materials and the inherent continuous reflection about the reach and capabilities of architecture are an interesting alternative way to approach this issue. The materials used in social housing should address local and economic possibilities and the real needs for access to housing in the contemporary context.
In this article, we analyze different projects published on our site to identify some of the predominant materials used in social housing, both for the formation of structures or enclosures. The intentions of this are two-fold: firstly, to create a worldwide panorama of different case studies with different construction styles from a range of geographical locations, and secondly, to provide inspiration and tools to architects to make better social housing.
Below we present 15 social housing projects and their diverse materials and construction styles.
.jpg?1573485211 "The Roof House / MILODAMALO. Image © Ilya Ivanov")
