In the next four years, the world’s tallest residential building with a load-bearing structure in wood, will rise above the ridges in the Swiss city Winterthur, close to Zürich. The 100-metres-tall tower, Rocket&Tigerli, is designed by award-winning Scandinavian practice Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects (SHLA) to create a framework for an active and attractive neighbourhood, deeply rooted in the area’s historical context, which offers modern, high-quality housing with maximum inflow of daylight.

In this special event presented in partnership with Semi Permanent, we are delighted to welcome Enlai Hooi, Head of Innovation at SHLA, to share inspiring insights into the project and to discuss the opportunities for urban and building design.

The project marks a milestone in the construction of timber buildings – not solely because of its 100 metres, which set the record for residential buildings with a load-bearing timber construction, but also because it introduces an innovative construction system that examines wood as a natural replacement for concrete, providing an important case study to how this might be applied to building practice more broadly.

The Swiss company Implenia and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Zürich, ETH, have worked together in developing the new system, which allows the construction of taller timber buildings. In the new system, the concrete core has been replaced with wood, resulting in the fact that the individual beam comes in at a lower weight. This makes it possible to build taller constructions while, at the same time, ensures that the entire building process achieves a lower amount of embedded carbon.

The Auckland event takes place on the 18th October – click here to register.

The Wellington event takes place on the 19th October – click here to register.