France’s Adivbois wood construction initiative has taken another step nearer to its goal of seeing a network of exemplar timber-based multi-storey buildings constructed around the country with the announcement of the winners of its ‘Immeubles a Vivre Bois’ design competition (IaVB).
Each entry in the contest is the blueprint for an actual project on a specified site. Some of the winners were selected by PUCA, the Plan for Urban Construction and Architecture organisation, others by panels of local authority planners and others from the location where the project is designed to be built.
“The concept of Adivbois is very much to involve local people and help overcome urban planner’s traditional reservations and even fears about timber building, and especially medium to high-rise timber building,” said Adivbois spokesperson Marion Cloarec at the Carrefour International du Bois exhibition.
Adivbois stands for Association for the Development of Residential Timber Buildings. It traces its roots back to 2015 when President Hollande’s government launched its Nouvelle France Industrielle strategy. This identified key industries for France’s high tech, low environmental impact economic future. It also pledged these sectors measures to back their fast-track development, including improving and benchmarking training, supporting investment, encouraging development of supportive ‘industry clusters’ and cutting red tape.
The timber industry, and within that timber-based construction specifically, was among the 34 chosen sectors. The latter was identified as being relatively under performing given France’s timber resource. It was also felt to have special potential in helping the country meet emission targets and develop a new, low carbon economic model.
Subsequently, to capitalise on the government initiative, an alliance of architects, timber and wood construction companies, wood product manufacturers, engineers, local and central government representatives and academic and research organisations got together to form Adivbois, a 70/30 public/private partnership. They set an objective of getting a medium- to high-rise timber residential building constructed in every region of France to spur on development of others. But not only that, the buildings had to be innovative and push back the design and technical possibilities of woodbased construction.
A total of 48 teams, comprising architects, contractors and their project developers, with backing from a local planning department, put forward entries for the IaVB competition and, after much deliberation, the teams of PUCA and local representative juries selected 13 winners, or ‘laureats’.
“What we were looking for from this competition were practical, realisable projects that could work in today’s construction market and demonstrate that timber building had a place in the real commercial world,” said Helene Peskine, PUCA permanent secretary. “At the same time they had to demonstrate the sort of breakthrough innovations that the special environment of the competition, the Adivbois programme and the support of PUCA allow.”
The predominant structural materials of all 13 IaVB winners are glulam and CLT, but a range of other timber and wood products are used extensively internally and externally, and many of them are left uncovered, purposefully exposed to view to highlight the buildings’ wood credentials.
Among the seven PUCA winning laureats, four were presented with a special Grand Prix Award. ‘Capable’, designed to be built in Saint-Herblain, comprises 45 apartments over nine storeys, and 2,975m3 and expresses its timber make-up extensively through its structural frame, balconies and cladding. ‘Des Alpes du Jardin’, designed for Grenoble, is also nine storeys, but covers 8,600m2. A key feature is very advanced thermal performance, while a goal is for the structure to enhance local biodiversity, with the development extensively planted and including green walls and roofs.
The fourth PUCA Grand Prix winner is Balcons en Fort, which as the name suggests, has all-round balconies over its eight storeys, and features an innovative natural ventilation system. The fifth is Le Havre’s ‘Wood up’, the tallest of the PUCA winners at 14 storeys. It is clearly intended to demonstrate the technical possibilities of modern timber building.
Architects’ impressions show the structure seeming to balance lightly on slender engineered timber stilts, which allow a clear view right under the building.
The headline grabbers among the local jury-selected IaVB winners are obviously buildings B1A3 and B1B4 for Paris’s Semapa urban innovation project. The first, also called ‘Wood Up’ is another 14-storey block, a 7,636m3 mix of apartments and offices, with a ‘transparent’ central floor allowing passers-by to see through the structure, which is intended to “express a new way of living”.
The other Semapa building, ‘La Tour Commune’ or building B1B4 is the tallest of all, a student accommodation block 15 storeys high with a 100% wood structure.
Etienne Crepon, president of Adivbois member the Centre for Building Science and Technology, said that the winning projects would not only create models for other wood-based developments, they would also help drive evolution of an integrated timber construction industry.
“In their organisational component they represent systemic innovation, which will certainly aid structural development of the French timber building industry,” he said. Dominique Weber, vice-president of Adivbois and president of the French National Furniture Industry Union and French Wood Industries echoed this point.
“Adivbois is also about organisational innovation, with the goal of adding value for the entire wood construction supply chain,” he said. “The objective is a new economic model achieved by grouping companies – often small ones – on a local level behind projects that combine economic and environmental merit. The Adivbois programme is creating great examples to follow, which should allow us to achieve this new approach industry-wide.”
The next stage for Adivbois is to see the IaVB winners built around the country. While that happens, it will also be following their every development so they act as living timber building lessons for the entire wood and wood construction industry.
