BNA Best Building of the Year 2022
Winner Category private residential experience
The 45-meter-high wooden residential building Stories responds to the challenges of a densely populated, communal, sustainable and healthy urban life. The self-build project combines human and non-human habitats, is largely built with biobased materials from renewable sources and uses ‘open building’ principles to meet future needs.
The concrete plinth of 11m high forms the basis for the 45m high tower made of CLT plate construction (770m3 wood). The massive wooden construction determines the nave size of 4.80m, leading to floor plans of 6 nave. Large openings in the portals provide a spatial connection between the naves, allowing for a flexible layout of one to six separate units per floor. The walls are clad with fire-resistant and sound-absorbing plasterboard. The floors are also made of CLT, visible as wooden ceilings on the floors below and covered with a layer of foam concrete for acoustic insulation. The facade consists of precast HSB modules with wooden frames and cladding that contributes to the aesthetics of the design.
While wood was unpopular at the time of the design due to its higher cost, the limitations of the width of the nave and some skepticism about the material’s fire safety, the building group, consisting of the residents, nevertheless deliberately chose almost all wood construction due to its circularity and durability.
Stories additionally focuses on collective urban life. An enveloping steel structure contains expansive outdoor spaces in the form of private balconies and winter gardens that are simultaneously architectural shade elements, a communal roof for urban agriculture connected to a shared, multi-purpose interior space, and 57 double-height vegetation units. The larger of these are niches for different types of trees, shrubs, grasses and related fauna, creating vertical greenery.
Photography: Max Hart Nibbrig, Luuk Kramer, Heutink Groep
