Analyzing the key architectural and structural factors in the formation oftall timber projects in Europe

Abstract

As tall wooden structures emerge as a burgeoning and promising sector, offering consider-able ecological and financial benefits across their life cycles, their prevalence is on the rise,particularly in Europe. However, the current corpus of literature fails to offer a detailedassessment of the fundamental architectural and structural planning parameters forEuropean tall timber towers ( 9 stories). To span this gap and improve the comprehensionof the developing European tendencies, this study meticulously examined information from33 tall timber towers in Europe. The principal findings uncovered the following: (i) tall tim-ber buildings predominantly favored residential applications as their primary function, (ii)the prevailing preference for the central core arrangement was evident, (iii) the most preva-lent design preference for tall timber buildings was prismatic forms, (iv) widespread adop-tion of composite materials was evident, with combinations of timber and concrete beingparticularly prominent, and (v) the structural systems were primarily characterized by shear-frame configurations. By revealing these present-day attributes of tall wooden towers inEurope, this article is anticipated to offer valuable insights to architectural designers, assist-ing and directing them in the formulation and implementation of forthcoming develop-ments in this domain.