Schmidt Hammer Lassen Designs World’s Tallest Residential Timber Building
Schmidt Hammer Lassen Designs World’s Tallest Residential Timber Building
Danish architecture practice Schmidt Hammer Lassen revealed the winning design of an international competition for the world’s tallest residential timber building. Located in the Swiss city of Winterthur, the 100-metre tall Rocket&Tigerli tower developed in close corporation with the local Swiss architecture studio Cometti Truffer Hodel echoes the 19th-century industrial architecture of the surrounding area through its facades of dark red and yellow terracotta bricks. The project proposes a variety of residential typologies and amenities that are set to create a vibrant neighbourhood.
The design breaks away from the principles of the original masterplan for the site that envisioned a closed block structure and instead proposes four detached buildings that allow for more daylight to penetrate the site. The project features a mix of regular housing, student housing, retail spaces, as well as a hotel, restaurant and sky-bar. The composition of the four structures creates a diverse urban space within and around the plot. The green plaza at the heart of the development is designed by international landscape architecture studio Vogt.
At SHL, it is a tradition to design in wood, which is expressed through ongoing projects in Oslo, Dordrecht, Toronto, and Vancouver. We have always been proactive in our use of the material, not just because of its aesthetic qualities but also because of the technical construction possibilities it paves the way for. The new production method presented in this project brings our love for the material into a modern building. – Kristian Ahlmark, partner and Design Director at Schmidt Hammer Lassen.
The project sets a new height record for residential buildings with load-bearing timber construction but also introduces an innovative construction system, developed by Swiss company Implenia and tETH Zürich, that replaces the concrete core with wood, reducing beam weight and the amount of embedded carbon. The project is set to be completed in 2026.
