Pilot wooden apartment buildings with affordable rental housing

Residential houses made of wood are still standing in the Czech Republic like a saffron, and therefore every new project is a very welcome contribution to the discussion. They allow us to fully verify the potential of wooden buildings in this segment of the construction industry. The project of apartment buildings in Žďár nad Sázavou is all the more valuable because it is being built in cooperation between a private investor and the local government and will offer rental housing upon completion.

In total, this will be 2 apartment buildings with 34 affordable housing units that will be available to employees in key occupations. The implementation of the project, whose investor is the company Affordable Housing of Česká spořitelna, was made possible mainly by a subsidy from the State Investment Support Fund. The city administration itself came up with the plan and selected a suitable plot of land in the Klafar locality in the north-west of the city.

“The urban layout of the apartment buildings is based on the principle of the traditional urban block, which determines the hierarchy and character of the types of spaces from public areas in the street through semi-private courtyards to private front garden areas. The proposed block makes the corner of Sázavská and K Milířům streets, the spatial arrangement of the buildings creates a semi-public courtyard oriented to the south, in the western area of the territory there are leisure areas with vegetation,” describe the authors of the project design from Kuba & Pilař architects.

The load-bearing structure of the houses is made of CLT panels, which will be complemented by a staircase and an elevator shaft made of reinforced concrete. Also for the pavilions, a combination of CLT ceiling panels and monolithic concrete slab is envisaged. A total of 1,200^{m3 of} wood will be used for the construction of two four-storey buildings, which is also used on the facades of the houses in the form of larch slats on aluminium grids.

“The internal composition of the perimeter walls consists of a wooden grid on acoustic stirrups filled with thermal insulation and the surface layer is made of gypsum fibre boards. In rooms where the acoustic requirements are higher, we installed plasterboard partitions. They are also used for wiring, individual installations and technologies,” says Tomáš Nemrava, Managing Director of Nema, the company responsible for the construction of the project.

By betting on timber buildings, there will be a significant time saving in the construction of the project. According to the investor’s estimates, the project should be as much as half of that, and it should be finished in 5 quarters. “The assembly of the four-storey apartment building itself took 10 days. Thanks to the prefabrication technology, we are able to do the vast majority of the work in the factory,” says Tomáš Nemrava and continues, “Another big advantage lies in the usable area. Thanks to the wall thicknesses and prefabrication that increase the quality of the work, a house of the same size made of wood has more usable area than one made of brick.”

The use of timber in this project is also expected to save 30-50% of the energy costs required for construction compared to the conventional method. There will also be a significant reduction in the carbon footprint, but specific figures are not known. Once completed, it will be only the second four-storey residential development in the Czech Republic (the first is the Timber Praha project by UBM Development Czechia).

Residential houses SázavskáAuthorsKuba & Pilař architekti Author team Ladislav Kuba, Tomáš Pilař, Radka Vašut, IvonaUherkováProjectaddressŽďár nadSázavouProjectyearQ1 2023, expected completion Q2 2025Generalcontractor AUBÖCK s.r.o.Subcontractor NEMA s.r.o. Investor Affordable Housing of Česká spořitelny Visualization Kuba & Pilař architekti, Norbert Walter