090 HOUSING CASE STUDY MEI ARCHITECTS SAWA
Mei Architects and planners gained fame and multiple awards for their creation of Rotterdam’s elegant Fenix I Loft Apartments, which placed light and airy homes on top of a refurbished warehouse whose cultural facitilies are now creating community and vitality around this former derelict dockside. Now they are gearing up to build the ‘healthiest building in the Netherlands’: SAWA is a unique wooden residential building, 50m high and constructed along circular principles. Its ownership also aims to boost inclusivity, with 50 mid-market rental homes that look no different from the 20 private sector homes, and 39 owner-occupied homes.
Mei’s innovations include taking a 50 per cent stake in Nice Developers who will fund the project. The structure is built entirely of CLT (cross laminated timber) with concrete kept to a minimum: Mei is avoiding the usual practice in CLT buildings of using concrete for floors for stability and thermal mass. Here they will use CLT for the flooring, weighted and stabilised with dry ballast. Says practice director Robert Winkel: ‘This means the building is fully circular and therefore demountable.’ All trees used for SAWA’s construction come from sustainably managed forests in West Germany and for every tree cut down, four different species will be planted. Other materials used will be ‘biobased’ where possible. In areas where the wooden structure can be left untreated it will be, and plaster will be kept to a minimum. Greenery fills the building, both from outside and in. There will be 600 linear metres of planters with over 20 different types of plants, as well as nesting boxes for birds, butterflies and bees.
Apartments range from 50 to 165 sq m, and there will be shared facilities, including a DIY workshop and storage room, and both a shared deck and a vegetable garden to actively build community. All apartments are designed for cross ventilation and oxygenation, with controlled ventilation valves in the faces. Solar panels will provide energy – include powering the lift – and apartments are heated through a district heating facility. All these measures in combination give it an EPC rating of 0. It was completed towards the end of 2023.
The scheme is already winning awards – including the Annual Architecture MasterPrize (AMP), America’s most prestigious architecture competition. The judges praised its ’balance of form and function’ as well as its impressive environmental credentials.
Client Nice Developers
Architects Mei Architects and Planners Size 12,000 sq m
Construction Started August 2022, completion end 2023
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