The height of this 29-storey building will be nearly 100 meters. But the main difference between the high-rise building, which will be erected in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg, is that it will be built … from wood. Concrete structures will give it additional strength. The new high-rise building will become the tallest wooden residential skyscraper not only in Germany, but also in the world. Germany keeps pace with the current global architectural trend, etc.Such environmentally friendly and warm houses on the German real estate market will appear More.
Multifunctional giant
“WoHo” (short for “Wohnhochhaus” – “residential multi-storey building”) is the name of the project, the competition for which was won by the Norwegian architectural bureau “Mad arkitektor”. It will consist of a main tower and two adjoining low-rise buildings with landscaped terraces. In one of them, which has seven floors, it is planned to create public and semi-public spaces, including a bakery, a cafe, a canteen, various workshops, studios, a kindergarten, a room for an after-school group, youth centers, and a playground. On the top floor of the main tower there will be a bar and a sauna.
Buildings adjacent to the main building of a wooden multifunctional complex in Berlin
But 60 percent of the 18 thousand square meters of usable area is intended for housing – apartments for rent, cooperative apartments, condominiums, social apartments, apartments for the so-called “assisted living” (Betreutes Wohnen), which are an alternative to nursing homes, when living independently, however, special medical and social services are provided for older people in need of care.
At the same time, there will be few parking spaces for cars at the high-rise. The authors of the project want to motivate the future residents of this house to use more environmentally friendly modes of transport, the rental zones of which will be created here – just like charging stations for electric vehicles and a garage for bicycles with a workshop for their repair.
Eco-friendly building material
A lot speaks in favor of erecting buildings from wood. And the main advantage is that wood is a natural building material that does not contain harmful substances and therefore is also suitable for people with allergies. Since wood is able to absorb moisture from the indoor air and release it again, the microclimate in a wooden house is much better than in a building made of reinforced concrete.
84-meter wooden skyscraper HoHo in Vienna
In addition, wood is a renewable raw material with a good ecological balance: it can be recycled and disposed of without waste harmful to nature. Not to mention the fact that wood has a low thermal conductivity and good insulating properties, and thus is excellent for construction where energy efficient technologies are used.
Opponents of the construction of wooden high-rise buildings argue that such buildings quickly catch fire. Nevertheless, firefighters have long known that wooden buildings constructed from modern high-quality natural materials are, to a certain extent, safer and more reliable than, for example, steel structures. At high temperatures, steel elements melt quickly, lose their elasticity and, as a result, can bend and break. In addition, wooden houses are considered to be more earthquake resistant.
Why are prices going up? for wood
Many technologies and materials for sustainable construction are now available to developers. However, green construction with wood is more expensive than conventional construction. And how environmentally friendly the house being built will be in the end depends largely on the developer’s budget. It would seem that in Germany there should be no problems with wood, because there are many forests in the country. Nevertheless, roofers and builders have to pay twice or even three times more for construction timber today than a year ago. So, if a comparatively one cubic meter of spruce wood recently cost about 30 euros, now the price for it has jumped to 90 euros.
The central association of the German construction industry explains the reason for the shortage of timber and the rise in prices for German timber by factors such as the constantly growing demand for them on the world market, the construction boom during the pandemic, as well as the death of a large number of trees due to the frequent attacks of the harmful bark beetle. According to the Federal Association of the Sawmill and Woodworking Industry of Germany, in 2020 the volume of exports of round and sawn timber from Germany amounted to 20 million cubic meters – 80 percent more than in 2019. The main customers are the USA and China.
World trend
Wooden skyscrapers are being built all over the world. It is worth mentioning at least such impressive projects as the 24-storey HoHo skyscraper in Vienna, the Plyscraper building in Tokyo or the two-tower Dutch Montains skyscraper in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The popularity of wooden architecture is gaining momentum in Germany. Almost every fifth new building here is built of wood. In the area of high-rise wooden architecture, projects such as a seven-story house in the Prenzlauer Berg district of Berlin have been implemented. Eleven wooden high-rise buildings are planned to be built in Munich. A wooden skyscraper with a height of 65 meters is currently being built in Hamburg.
The world’s tallest wooden skyscraper rises today in Brumunddal, Norway
The tallest wooden skyscraper on the planet rises today in Brumunddal, Norway. However, five years later, this 18-story giant, 85.4 meters high, will have to give way to the Berlin giant: the 98-meter WoHo house in the Kreuzberg metropolitan area is scheduled to be commissioned in 2026.
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