Strandparken Building B
It started in the 1990s with Arne Olson, a young man with a passion for ecology. We met one night by complete coincidence in Copenhagen. It turned into a deep dive through all that was known at the time about green building, with the big construction firm picking up the tab. Sure, wood framing ought to be the future even for multi-family housing.
Arne later came to Folkhem to be the CEO after Sven-Harry. We won an urban planning competition in Sundbyberg in 2007, and got to design four apartment buildings for Folkhem. The first is called B and has just now been occupied in the summer of 2013.
It’s nine stories high with a load-bearing frame of solid wood from Martinsson’s, and the outside is entirely clad in cedar shingles. It looks like a wooden house.
A wood-framed building weighs only a third of what it would if it had been made of steel and concrete. It’s so light that it has to be tied down to the foundation with 23-mm metal rods that reach all the way to the eighth floor.
It ended up costing 15% more than it would have with conventional construction (the next one is only going to be 10% more, and on the one after that we’ve got it!). We’re doing four buildings, one after the other….
This is the kind of building that elected officials should demand when they call for cost-efficient prefabricated homes. It’s warm and dry inside, with the aroma of wood, sheltered from precipitation during construction under a protective roof with an integrated crane. A beloved archetype, a winning Monopoly house.
Okay, we do need to sprinkler the building.
Gert Wingårdh, Anna Höglund
Housing type: Apartments, 1-4 bedrooms, some duplex.
Number of units: 31
Tenure form: Condominium
Building footprint: 540 m2
Habitable floor area: 2740 m2
Lot size: 1598 m2
Lot cost: 2.25 million euro plus site costs for relocation of street (Hamngatan) and construction of park, piers, and esplanade.
Construction method and framing: Prefabricated modules with load-bearing frame of solid wood made by Martinsons.
Heating system: District heating for hydronic radiant floor heat.
Estimated annual energy use per square meter of conditioned space: 75 kWh/m2
