High performance hybrid construction system with timber and steel
In just five months, an energy‐efficient apartment building with 20 low‐priced rental apartments was built in Lenzburg (Switzerland) using a newly developed high‐performance hybrid construction system.
The principle of the high‐performance hybrid construction system envisages cubic living space modules made of a lightweight timber construction and manufactured ready to move, which are inserted into a previously assembled steel skeleton construction on site. In contrast to the usual room module construction method, in which the modules are stacked on top of each other, the present design principle of the self‐supporting timber construction modules allows a reduction of wall thicknesses and thus a considerable optimization of material use. The steel skeleton construction enables an optimal adaptation of wall thickness of the steel hollow sections to the number of floors. The external dimensions of the steel skeleton support remain always the same for four to eight story buildings and allow a maximum standardization in the detail design. One of the key elements of the development work is the consistently developed sound decoupling between the living space module and the steel skeleton. All support details, stabilisation connections and connections between module and skeleton are sound decoupled by elastomer layers.