STÉPHANE HERZOG The Geneva engineering and wood design firm Charpente Concept is a mecca for woodworking. The firm, founded in 1991 by master carpenter Thomas Büchi, designed the Broken Chair at Place des Nations in Geneva, made the Goûter Hut on the slopes of Mont Blanc out of wood and came up with the Palais de l’Équilibre, the massive wooden sphere presented at the Swiss National Exhibition in 2002 before being installed at CERN. This firm’s other point of pride is that it was enlisted in the wake of the fire at Notre-Dame in Paris to carry out a technical analysis of the cathedral’s nave in preparation for its reconstruction. The firm looked into archives 600 years old, a real immersion into the Middle Ages, when 20 years could go by between when wood was cut and when the resulting beams were fitted. A case of reclaiming “Wood is reclaiming the place it used to hold centuries ago, before it was replaced by steel and then by concrete. People had forgotten its qualities as a material,” says Rafael Villar, vice-president of the company. He qualified in 1996 and still remembers starting out in the industry, when proponents of wood were considered eccentric. Granted, the firm in question had just erected a wooden exhibition hall 300 metres in length in Geneva, but most of its orders were for chalets and a few gym roofs. Today, wood is used to build residential buildings. “Over the past 30 years, the delivery turnarounds for some parts have more than doubled,” notes the Geneva native. This is a sign of high demand. Ultrasound is used to define the resistance of parts before they are processed. Digital machines are used to cut them to size. On construction sites, prefabricated wooden parts can be assembled considerably more quickly than mineral walls. “Wood is light, which makes it suitable for taller constructions,” emphasises Sébastien Droz, spokesperson for Lignum, the umbrella association for woodworking professions. We are even entering the era of wooden skyscrapers. In the Lokstadt The renaissance of wood in Swiss construction Wood, with its capacity to store CO2, is all the rage in the construction industry. It is even being used to build skyscrapers. Swiss expertise is flavour of the month. Demand is growing, but tensions lurk beneath the surface. district of Winterthur, the Rocket Tower is set to be 100 metres high. “It is one of the tallest wooden residential structures currently planned,” according to Ina Invest, the building developer. The tower will need 3,300 cubic metres of wood to build its load-bearing structure. “We will be using beech and spruce from Switzerland and neighbouring countries,” says spokesHigher, farther, faster, more beautiful? In search of somewhat unconventional Swiss records This edition: Building up to the highest wooden constructions in the world Rocket, a 100-metre high-rise in Winterthur (canton of Zurich), will be the world’s highest residential building made of wood. Visualisation: Ina Invest 14 Report
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