Arup to develop 21-story wooden residential building

Amsterdam, The Netherlands — Arup was selected to develop HAUT, the highest wooden residential building in the world to date, counting 21 floors. The firm will work in partnership with Lingotto, Nicole Maarsen, TEAM V Architecture and Nederlandse Energie Maatschappij.

The 73-meter-high residential tower located in the Amstelkwartier will include 55 apartments, public plinth Hortus bicycles and an underground car park. It will have a total gross floor area of approximately 14,500 square meters and is to receive the BREEAM Outstanding label, the highest possible sustainability score.

Building in wood is one of the most talked about innovations in sustainable construction internationally, due to the large storage capacity of CO2. Using wood provides an answer to the Municipality of Amsterdam’s quest for CO2 neutrality.

HAUT's wood can store over 3 million kilograms of CO2. In addition, 1.250 square meters of PV (solar) panels will help the building produce renewable energy, while wastewater is purified through a constructed wetland on the roof. The parking garage in the building has space for electric (shareable) cars.

The municipality of Amsterdam selected this team for its vision of the city of the future in which nature and architecture are balanced. HAUT also stands for haute couture: designed customized architecture. The design offers the first buyers unlimited freedom of choice in dwelling size, number of floors and the location of rooms, outdoor spaces and voids. Within a strong and simple façade design, with white-gray floor tapes and high windows, the balconies seem to have randomly been slid in and out. The wooden ceilings of balconies and large overhangs on the sharp corner at the Spaklerweg make HAUT's architecture expressive and iconic.

For this project Arup is providing multidisciplinary engineering services, including building services engineering, fire, acoustics and building physics consulting.

Amstelkwartier, the new district on the Amstel encompasses about 4,000 homes, shops and businesses. At this point, approximately 1,000 homes have been completed and the first school has been opened. Construction of the new city park Somer Lust aan de Amstel has been finished as well.