The Réinventer Paris competition was conceived to promote new architectural ideas for the city's future, and provided the impetus behind Planning Korea's L’air Nouveau de Paris and Vincent Callebaut's 2050 Paris Smart City. A new entry, by Michael Green Architects, imagines the world's tallest wooden building for the city.
Details on the project are very light at this early stage, but Vancouver's MGA has conceived a 35-story mixed-use tower, dubbed Baobab, that would use the firm's wood construction methods that can reportedly outperform steel in a fire.
Located on a 6,450 sq m (69,427 sq ft) plot on Boulevard Pershing, in Paris' 17th arrondissement, the project would include the main tower and some smaller wood buildings nearby, and feature social housing, a student hotel, market, a bus station, and electric car charging points.
"Our goal is that through innovation, youthful social contact and overall community building, we have created a design that becomes uniquely important to Paris," says MGA. "Just as Gustave Eiffel shattered our conception of what was possible a century and a half ago, this project can push the envelope of wood innovation with France in the forefront. The Pershing Site is the perfect moment for Paris to embrace the next era of architecture."
The Réinventer Paris shortlist is due to be announced this (northern) summer, and the eventual winner will be given an opportunity to try and work out a deal with city officials to build their proposal.
Source: MGA via Arch Daily
For my home shop building, it's ICFs skinned in CorTen steel with a membrane roof over WOODEN trusses, but it has no "warmth".
BC hosts several advanced wood technology engineering institutions and companies, encouraged by the BC Government's "Wood First" program. The "Timber Engineering and Applied Mechanics" research group at UBC's Faculty of Forestry is itself housed in a striking large wooden campus building. The "Wood Innovation and Design Centre" is active in Prince George, BC.
Netherlands has an attractive wooden highway bridge at Krusak. The longevity of large wooden structures is illustrated by the Kintai bridge in Japan, preserved under their "National Treasures" program.
Odd and controversial as it may seem, massive timber construction of apartment buildings and bridges is already spreading in practice.
The skyscrapers in the picture look like bare wood with no covering. Wood is great for timber frame homes, but not for skyscrapers.Aside from termites and bees, it would have to withstand freeze/thaw cycles, sun, wind, acid rain, mold, and extreme humidity. Who's going to stain/cover the building with Thomson's Water Seal/Cabot's/Linseed Oil/Olympic protectant every four or five years ?