Architect Tom Franzen has not been able to build a single building in his fifteen years of successful career without losing some of the important ideas in the process and not making a compromise with the customer. He ran out of strength to endure this natural position for the architectural profession in 2009, and together with the manager of the construction sector Klaus Usoren, he created the Lemniskade company to manage and implement his own projects as an architect and developer in one person. Their first project was the tallest timber-framed building in Holland - Patch 22 in Amsterdam.
Patch 22 is arguably one of the most resilient buildings in the world: not just in context
relationship with carbon dioxide, but also because of its inherent ability to adapt to market changes. Spatial and technical solutions allow a seven-story building to change its function from residential to office during its life cycle - and vice versa. To make this scheme work not only in theory, the architects institutionalized the possibility of such a transition, having achieved a special form of agreement with the city authorities.
Each of the six floors can house one spacious apartment with an area of up to 540 m2 with long loggias along the facade, up to eight one- and two-level apartments with an individual layout or an office open space. This freedom is possible thanks to the union of the frame support system, 4-meter ceilings and a special floor structure. On load-bearing glued beams with a cross-section of 800 mm x 450 mm, metal I-beams are supported, providing a bearing capacity of up to 4 kN distributed load, and communications and electrical wiring are laid in the space between them. Apparently, this height (about 400 mm) is enough to provide the necessary slope for the plumbing pipes and lead them into the shafts in the central core: thus, the risers do not cut through the building, providing the possibility of a wide variety of layouts (their options and some ready-made interiors of individual cells can be viewed here). The first floor, 6.4 m high, is reserved for commercial premises, and perpendicular to the main block are five two-level block houses with roof terraces.
The natural surface of the glued post-and-beam frame and walls was left in the interior without finishing - a protective non-combustible coating: the fire resistance limit of 120 minutes is achieved due to a strong increase in the cross-sectional area of all wooden structures (for more information on ensuring fire safety in wooden buildings, click here).
The building has turned out to be energetically neutral: solar panels are installed on the roof, generating electricity, there are solar collectors, and the rainwater collection system provides Patch 22 with technical water; heating is carried out using pellet stoves - fuel pellets from pressed waste. The total construction budget was € 6,400,000, the cost per square meter was € 1209.
Patch 22 should be a catalyst for the development of the area in the north of Amsterdam, a beacon and a vision of the future. It seems that the experiment of working as an architect and a developer was simultaneously recognized as successful: now the company is developing a neighboring plot, preparing a Top-Up project for it - a 30-meter wooden building on a reinforced concrete foundation.
