One of Europe’s largest hybrid timber buildings is progressing rapidly, with design giant Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) revealing that the Luxembourg Airport’s Skypark Business Centre (SBC) is almost fully enclosed and on track to open in the coming months.
That is according to Kai-Uwe Bergmann, a partner at BIG, which revealed that “one of Europe’s largest mass timber hybrid buildings (at 78,000 m2 under construction) will include office space, conference centre, retail as well as a Moxy Hotel servicing LUX Airport.”
Initially revealed in 2018, BIG collaborated with Metaform on the enormous project, which was beset with delays (due to the pandemic), which saw the original 2021/22 construction timeline pushed out to late 2024.
“The Skypark Business Centre will be a reference for environmentally friendly and sustainable buildings that help us align our economic and ecological goals,” said René Steinhaus, the airport’s former CEO.
Wood Central understands that the building consists of two long and slim volumes (17 metres in width) stacked and rotated 180 degrees: “The seven-storey structure is comprised of all wood in its upper structures, bridges and slabs and consists of two stacked zigzagging bars,” BIG said.
More than 13,000 square metres of cross-laminated timber boards, supplied by Binder Holz, were used on the project, while Luxembourg-based Steffen Holzbau fabricated and installed the timber on-site.
“The project’s sheer size was impressive: the building is 365 m long, 52 m wide and 30 m tall,” according to Markus Maas, master carpenter and structural engineer for Steffen Holzbau, who spoke to Swiss-based SIGA about the project. “We also had to erect four bridges 45 metres long, 12 metres high and 16 meters wide, measuring 18 metres high,” he said.
“An additional challenge was to weatherproof the timber structure for around three months,” Mr Maas said, adding that the damp surfaces were problematic because they could not be glued:
“We had to dry the areas affected with a cloth before we could apply Wetguard to glue the screws into place. The roof’s surface was glued on-site, as preassembling the membrane in a factory would not make sense.”
Spread over seven large floor plates, the new centre will accomodate shops, restaurants, offices, and a 130-room boutique hotel. Four semi-subterranean levels (made from concrete) are also being constructed to accommodate more than 1500 vehicles.
“SBC is configured to create office layouts that cater to all working models and company sizes,” said Metaform, adding that the “core functions are grouped in the building sections where the two volumes overlap, which enables direct elevator access for every tenant.”
In addition, “office floor plates are flexible and continuous to make spaces easy to subdivide, while the ‘Grande Galerie’ – a porous inner passage on the ground floor—connects all cores to alternating programs.”
The new milestone comes weeks after Portland opened its new 9-acre timber terminal – with Timberlab working with Zip-O-Log Mills to install a 390,000-square-foot mass timber roof supported by 34 steel columns.
- To learn more about the SBC timber installation, click here for the interview with Markus Maas.
