The concept of a multi-storey wooden district Wood-city was created in the bureau of Totan Kuzembaev on the initiative of the Sokolsk woodworking plant, which is part of the Segezha group of companies. The project is a kind of "paper" project, its purpose is to demonstrate, on the example of a specific site, the possibilities of multi-storey wooden housing construction using CLT-panels: cross laminated timber panels, or cross-glued. It is no coincidence that the name of the project-idea echoes the well-known Finnish project Wood town, which was developed in 1997 at the University of Oulu - its goal was to popularize wooden construction in Finland, and it was achieved: already today, residential high-rise buildings using wooden structures are being erected in the country. In Russia, however, the idea of multi-storey construction from wood is still awaiting the addition of standards and the development of materials production.
The Moscow microdistrict Kamushki outside the northern border of the City was chosen as a demonstration site. In 2006, TPO "Reserve" designed an office and residential complex on this site, now the brick five-story buildings of the district are included in the renovation program - in their places Totan Kuzembaev designed his houses, and for some of the buildings on the corner he even suggested the possibility of reconstruction without demolition by building new independent structures - wooden shells for old buildings, improving living conditions by expanding the area of apartments and the appearance of an attic floor. How did he develop the idea that was so heatedly discussed in 2017 after the announcement of the renovation program: why should it be demolished, if it is possible to reconstruct? Demolition of a beloved house is not to everyone's taste.
The possibilities of reconstruction with expansion were demonstrated at houses No. 20, 18, 3 and 5 in the southern part of the territory, between the 1st and 2nd Krasnogvardeisky passages and Antonova-Ovseenko street: Kuzembaev turns several five-story buildings here along the perimeter of a large courtyard into quarter, uniting with a concrete public ground floor. The five-storey buildings are first reconstructed, then wooden penthouses are erected above them, the corners between the houses are built up with wooden structures, closing the contour and reaching the scale of the "Stalinist" quarter.
The project deliberately suggests different types of structures and layouts. In the northern corner, on the site of houses No. 33, 31 and 11, there is a concrete parking lot with an apartment building, which “descends” by steps-terraces along its roof - similar to what BIG did in Copenhagen's Orestad district, but in this case the originality Totana Kuzembayeva - in a combined constructive scheme of wood and concrete.
However, not only the parking is concrete. All the houses here are on the plinth of concrete ground floors in public functions: cafes, shops, children's clubs and everything else that modern urbanism requires.
Houses entirely made of wood, above the first floors, are divided into several types according to the type of structures: panel - from CLT-panels, modular - from modules completely manufactured at the factory, as well as panel-modular and panel-frame - the latter combine panels with glued timber beams.
If we talk about the layout, then in the western part, closer to the Third Ring, another quarter appears, with variable number of storeys, panel-modular technology, which closes the group of preserved houses. This is a sectional house and at the joints the sections are separated by concrete firewalls to increase fire resistance. The fire resistance of CLT panels, however, is already so high, since it is a massive structure,”says Dmitry Rudenko, vice president of Segezha.
The western quarter, in contrast to the southern one, is emphatically different in height: there are romantic pitched roofs, separated by green terraces at the level of the fifth floor. The glass of the first floors behind the trunks of the trees surrounding the houses makes the street of an imaginary "Hanseatic city" soaring in a cloud of greenery.
But neither a strict, dense quarter, reconstructed from preserved five-storey buildings, nor an easy charming town with sharp roofs can compare with the tower houses placed in the middle: three Aztec pyramids with a truncated top - panel, four frame-panel houses with "dancing" floors (of course, why do they need a frame - to keep the dance) and panoramic glazing of floors. And five modular houses, where the volumes now and then protrude far ahead, like cubes in a children's designer, flaunting the possibilities of wooden consoles, b about lighter than concrete structures. These houses are like avant-garde sculptures, whose purpose is to surprise with variety. But in addition to bright plastic solutions - we emphasize - each of them is tied to a certain type of construct, demonstrating its advantages and features.
The game of volumes is supported and strengthened by children's playgrounds-art objects in the courtyards.
*** “The architects themselves have proposed several types of houses and we can see how the new wooden housing, built between the existing houses, organically transforms the neighborhood development of the 1960s into a modern quarter. There was no question who should become the author of this project. Totan Kuzembaev is a virtuoso in the field of wooden construction and he perfectly understands and feels it, - says Dmitry Rudenko. - In our country, they have long been talking about wooden housing construction, but most often the idea of it comes down to an individual house built using traditional technologies from logs or, at best, from glued beams, while wooden structures are used all over the world in multi-storey residential construction, as well as in the construction of public and office buildings. To represent the real possibilities, we decided to create, based on the example of the Moscow site, a project of a quarter in which modified wood is used, in particular CLT, the most promising material that is not inferior in its performance characteristics to concrete - to show that we are talking about modern architecture, and not about huts … The Wood-city project is part of a global strategy, because coming up with a block is not enough to build it. It is necessary not only to change the standards with a focus on new materials based on wood, but in the light of the prospect of changing them, ensure the production of these materials by building DSK factories that produce houses not from concrete, but from wood."
“So far, we only dream of wooden high-rise buildings, but in many countries this is a reality. For our bureau, which has been working in the field of wooden architecture for a long time, this project became an opportunity to work in a completely “different tree”. New wood-based materials are as environmentally friendly as the wood itself, and the emergence of a modern wooden block in the city center is tantamount to the emergence of a large park,”says Totan Kuzembaev.
Speaking of ecology. In principle, wood is an environmentally friendly, renewable material. In addition, modular structures can radically improve the ecology of construction: since they are only collected on the construction site, there will be no dust or dirt. The abundance of greenery envisaged by the project: preserved in the courtyards and new on the roofs and even loggias, according to the Singaporean principle of "grow always, grow everywhere" - should emphasize and set off the ecological pathos: according to calculations, in one day the number of trees grows on the earth that can provide materials for construction 8-storey wooden block. The green, wooden low area looks contrasting against the backdrop of the City - like an oasis. The project is also greening the perimeter of the district, creating a “vegetation screen” between houses and busy roads.
So Wood-city has become an alternative, albeit utopian, to the traditional approach to the Moscow renovation program. The height here rises to only 9 floors. ***
“We have a classification of materials for metal, brick, concrete and even glass,” says co-author of the project Olzhas Kuzembaev.- And for the tree there is no such classification yet, it is just being developed. The addition of the joint venture with the classification of materials and structures made of wood will usher in the era of industrial wood construction.
All technologies offered by us assume maximum factory readiness. In which, in addition to economic benefits, there is also a social aspect: the need for unskilled labor is reduced. In addition, now our country exports most, more than 90% of the business wood, abroad this raw material becomes high-tech materials. This is ineffective from a macroeconomic point of view. Our mission in this project was to show that the wood construction industry can be as modern as that of other materials, and in some areas even ahead of them."
Indeed, Wood-city seems unrealizable in the near future, but the future is closer to the second edition of the set of rules for multi-apartment and public buildings using wooden structures (design and construction rules), released at the end of March 2018, in which new wood-based materials have already been introduced. But there is still an open question about the certification of modified wood-based materials, which are now widely used in construction abroad, such as CLT, for which the WoodCity project is designed, LVL and MXM. While all these issues are being resolved, wooden high-rise buildings could be built according to special technical conditions, in any case, our architects are already ready for this.
