Case Study for Urban Villa in Wood Construction

Sustainability, conservation of resources in the building industry and “Cradle to Cradle”, are just some of the many topics that currently put timber as a construction material back into focus. Even though the benefits of wooden constructions are not new, most of the new buildings are still erected in a “conventional way”, which mainly includes reinforced concrete. The main reason for this seems to be the lack of knowledge, the necessity for more in depth planning and economical drawbacks. In order to test if the higher costs still persist in contemporary timber engineering, this work focuses on the design of an apartment building in wood and an economical comparison to a design with reinforced concrete. To get the project as close to reality as possible, special attention was paid to technical feasibility and legal regulations. In the course of the structural design process optimisations for building components spanning more than 6 meters were carried out. In consideration of potential problems in terms of building physics an energy certificate, as well as thermal bridge simulations and a summer overheating calculation have been conducted.