OPALIA, PARIS
BUILDING PROJECTS
OPALIA PARIS, FRANCE
French resistance to concrete
A CLT office building currently on site in Paris is set to become an emblem of timber construction in France, as the country’s largest building of its kind. Jess Unwin speaks to its architects about how modern engineered timber is gaining traction as a solution
W
hen the €15m Opalia office development is completed next spring it will become the largest
timber building in Paris, but the team responsible for its design want it to stand tall for another reason. Project architects Art&Build hope it will help drive the growing movement to replace concrete with wood in new buildings and thereby dramatically reduce the construc- tion industry’s carbon footprint. The Opalia, located on a thin strip of land right next to the south-east section of the city’s inner ring road, the Boulevard Périphérique, will eventually comprise two storeys of below-ground car parking and then eight storeys above ground, rising to a height of 31 m.
Art&Build entered the competition to win the Opalia contract with the company’s very first wooden building design – and director Steven Ware believes that commit- ment to the use of wood, or cross-laminated timber (CLT) to be more accurate, helped sway the decision. He says: “What has often happened in the past is that wood is suggested for a building but is then abandoned in favour of concrete because of perceived higher costs. But I think wood won us the contract this time. Paris is more ecologically minded now, as are other cities like London. There’s rivalry between cities to move towards a low-carbon economy. So the competition jury liked that we proposed a timber build-
ing on a large scale because that’s the sort of project they want to see.”
Building the superstructure
Cross-laminated timber is really gaining ground as a construction material. Unlike glued laminated timber (GLT), also known as glulam, which is layers of wood glued together in the same direction, CLT consists of layers of timber fixed together at right angles to each other. Austrian company KLH, which is supply- ing the CLT on this project, says that with structural capabilities akin to concrete in material strength, CLT can be used for all elements of a building’s superstructure – wall, floor and roof.
The firm also stresses timber’s green cre- dentials as “the only truly renewable construction material, with the lowest energy consumption of any building mate- rial across its lifecycle.” The company adds: “Using cross-laminated timber will reduce CO2
because trees act as a carbon ‘sink’ removing CO2 from the atmosphere, releas-
ing oxygen and sequestering (storing) carbon.”
At the Opalia site, a major design chal- lenge is solar gain. To overcome this, an innovative double-skin facade is to be used all along the south-west side of the build- ing. Steven Ware says: “We knew this approach would provide solar protection – and acoustic protection too – but at the same time, something like this has never
Rivalry exists between French cities to be the first to move towards a low carbon economy
15
ADF OCTOBER 2016
WWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44