Urban densification developments for sustainable living in Tammela

This master thesis work focuses on complementary wood architecture for sustainable urban densification in Tampere’s city district Tammela. Tammela had been chosen for an urban densification pilot project site, supporting the prospective developments of Tampere city center. For the project sites, potential infill plots could be identified by interviewing the co-owner cooperatives of local housing sites, during a university course for students of architecture and of environmental policies. Emerging from those identified spaces for densification this thesis offers three different infill solutions and building typologies for three of the determined sites. The presented designs contain: 1) one extension, placed on top of an existing building, 2) townhouses in form of terraced houses and 3) an attached block infill with multi-storey buildings. A significant part of the architectural design is the proposal for a conceptual idea of a wood construction system of prefabricated, customized three-dimensional units and their assembly to a multi-storey wooden construction. The designs are discussed in the context of sustainable urban densification and contemporary wood construction as well as in its socio-economic context, focusing on the city of Tampere and Tammela district