Tour wooden structure: a Paris timber tower and extra

Consider Paris and extra cream-coloured limestone than wooden structure involves thoughts. However a brand new 50m-tall condo constructing may simply begin a pattern. Named ‘Wooden Up’, it is one of many first wooden towers to grace a European skyline. The mission was designed by French architectural agency LAN (Lan Structure Community), headed up by Benoît Jallon and Umberto Napolitano, and developed by REI Habitat, which specialises in wooden.

Wooden structure units a pattern in Paris

Wooden Up sits subsequent to the Seine between Paris and the suburb of Ivry, in a far-flung but rapidly creating nook of the thirteenth arrondissement. A boxy construction with massive home windows criss-crossed by sand-coloured wooden columns and beams, it stands out in a panorama the place neighbours embody town’s busy ring highway, an incinerator, and Jean Nouvel’s off-kilter Excursions Duo.

Tour LAN’s Wooden Up timber tower

This can be a mass timber constructing, that means that wooden layers are bonded utilizing both a glued laminated timber (glulam) or cross-laminated timber (CLT) course of, giving it the structural power of concrete. All of the wooden got here from French forests, and was transported by way of the Seine. The exterior columns are Douglas fir, for its moisture resistance; the inside columns are beech, for its compressive power; and the beams are spruce, for its bending resistance. LAN used the leftover wooden scraps to make furnishings.

Napolitano says the architects conceived the constructing to be not solely pioneering and ecological, however extremely engaging –even ‘iconic’, as its riverside location makes it seen from throughout. Transparency was a precedence, from the beneficiant home windows to exterior staircases connecting the flooring. ‘The concept was that individuals would really feel the infrastructure of their day by day lives,’ he notes.

LAN succeeded in making Wooden Up tempting sufficient for folks to maneuver to town’s edge – each one of many 132 residences, from studio to three-bedroom, has been rented. Every condo options floor-to-ceiling home windows and personal terraces. Some items have double-height residing areas. The general format is modular, with small residences above bigger ones, to allow them to in the future be mixed (the residences may be bought at a future date).

Moderately than air-con, the constructing advantages from a complicated thermal administration system. Deep exterior columns filter daylight coming by means of the home windows. The glass is handled with a photo voltaic coating, the curtains have a reflective silver layer, and there may be loads of pure air flow.

A way of neighborhood is constructed into the construction, too, with 500 sq m of shared terrace, together with an enormous, partly coated area on the eighth flooring, the place tons of of residents can come collectively to apply yoga, watch a present, or throw a celebration. Greens and herbs will develop in a communal backyard on the roof.

One aspect of the constructing presents an expansive view of Paris, from the Pantheon to the Eiffel Tower to La Défense. The opposite appears out on the smokestacks and towers of Ivry, with its personal sort of gritty city attraction, ‘like a German metropolis’, says Napolitano. The Seine is seen snaking previous either side.

Wooden Up is the long-awaited results of a 2017 competitors, sponsored by town of Paris and spurred by the commitments of COP21. It exemplifies how wooden development is experiencing a renaissance as cities search methods to mitigate local weather change. Among the many many labels that Wooden Up has earned are BBCA (low carbon) and Bois Français (French wooden), the latter created particularly for it.

‘Wooden is a particularly fascinating materials when it comes to carbon emissions,’ explains Napolitano, ‘since bushes seize carbon of their lifetime, and proceed to sequester it all through their life cycle. And you do not have to fabricate the fabric, you merely remodel it.’ The forests used to construct Wooden Up are managed sustainably – for each tree that’s lower down, one other is planted close by. Napolitano estimates that the constructing will emit 80 per cent much less carbon than a comparable concrete construction over a 50-year life cycle, when you account for actions resembling transporting the wooden by river and recycling the wooden scraps.

However wooden presents challenges, too. One among these hit dwelling when fireplace tore by means of the wood roof beams of Notre-Dame Cathedral in 2019. Napolitano remembers: ‘After that, there was quite a lot of reflection round timber development, which had not been particularly regulated in France.’ The totally different woods used for Wooden Up had been examined repeatedly to show they may face up to fireplace for not less than eight hours. The constructing’s exterior columns encompass a wooden core and an outer layer, with a non-combustible panel between them. Particulars resembling metallic ridges at each degree are supposed to cease a fireplace from travelling up the façade.

Wooden can also be dearer than different supplies; the architect says this constructing price €2,700 per sq. metre, in comparison with €2,500 for concrete. However he has little question the fabric is well worth the funding, and that stunning wooden towers will encourage others. ‘Basically, the ecological query must be reframed as a query of aesthetics,’ he says. ‘One thing that is not punishing, however optimistic.’