The highest residential building in the world made of wood

Where once locomotives were manufactured, a new urban district is being created in the heart of Winterthur. According to the project owners, the flagship of the new urban quarter called Lokstadt is a 100 metre-high residential building that will be constructed almost entirely of wood. It is the winning project of a study commission in which renowned architectural firms from all over the world participated. The project, on which the new wooden structure is based, was designed by a team of architects from Copenhagen together with architects from Lucerne. The tower called the Rocket will accommodate 255 apartments, many of them for students and non-profit housing, and is planned to be realised on 32 floors.

The high-rise building is based on a new type of timber construction that researchers at ETH Zurich helped to develop. The tube-in-tube approach is based on a vertical column in the core and an outer frame structure made of laminated beech veneer lumber. The real innovation lies in the wood-concrete composite floor, which is no thicker than a reinforced concrete floor, yet is stable and allows spans of up to nine metres, explains the project owner. Thanks to this technology the building is not dependent on a reinforced concrete core. The first use of this new construction method is scheduled for the 80 metre-high Project Pi in Zug, with completion expected in 2024.

According to the press release, the Rocket is the world's tallest wooden residential building currently being planned. A superlative that refers to the classification of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, where different types of high-rise buildings are compared. The Rocket, thanks to its supporting structure, would fall under the timber structures category. And there, apparently, the 18-storey Mjøstårnet in Brumunddal, Norway, is currently the tallest wooden residential building. It was inaugurated in 2019 and is 85.4 metres high.