Swedish Technical Benchmarking of TallTimber Buildings

The use of wood in the construction of multi-storey buildings has increased since the middle of the 1990’s and is still expected to grow in the future. 1994 the Swedish building rules changed. From material based, the rules became functional based. Before this year, the use of wood in houses with more than two storeys were prohibited for fire safety reasons. Now that wooden multi-storey buildings have been built for almost a quarter of a century, this report presents and explains the current technical requirements that multi-storey residential buildings must achieve: - Safety in case of fire, - Safe and comfortable structure, -Healthy indoor climate and frugal heating, Good acoustic. Environmental aspects and construction praxis are also shortly developed. Even thought, the list of requirements does not pretend to be exhaustively studied hereby. The choice is also related to the timber structures specificities. Five reference projects from 6 to 8 floors and built between 2006 and 2015 are presented briefly and used as examples along the report. Different wood building systems and technical solutions were used and illustrate the architectural and technical variability in the timber building industry as well as the evolution of the building regulations. The appendices to this report contain further information, drawings and pictures of these reference buildings. This report aims to bring some knowledge and practical ideas to people planning, designing or producing taller timber buildings in Sweden. It should be mention that the second part on safety in case of fire and the fifth part on acoustic require that the reader has some basic knowledge on this technical fields