Demountable construction, which allows for super fast assembly and disassembly, could be “the new standard in architecture.” That is according to Swiss architecture studio Itten + Brechbuhl, which has designed a temporary university sports hall in Zurich, Switzerland, fully kitted out in glue-laminated timber.
Shortlisted in the sustainable building category of Dezeen Awards 2024, Sporthallenprovisorium Gloriarank has replaced four sports halls at the University of Zurich with its glued laminated timber (glulam) structure clad in larch timber.
With sustainability in mind, Itten+Brechbühl designed the three-storey building with wood construction company Hector Egger Gesamtdienstleistung to be easily deconstructed after 10 years of use.
“To design a demountable building should be the new standard in architecture,” according to Itten+Brechbühl’s associate partner Daniel Blum. “It is only in the last, let’s say, 100 years that we started glueing everything together.”
“The development of demountable buildings gives us the possibility to cultivate our buildings, not only in form and expression but through construction and detail,” he said. “If we do so, sustainability and sufficiency can become driving forces for creating architecture.”
Situated on the corner of a triangular site, Itten+Brechbühl designed the building as a cluster of three combined cuboid volumes. The largest volume contains sports halls, the smallest features changing rooms and shower facilities, and the windowless volume has storage spaces and plant rooms.
According to Blum, as much raw timber was used as possible so elements could biodegrade if not reused for another project. Columns and beams were made from glulam, while untreated wood was used elsewhere in the building, including larch external cladding, oriented strand board (OSB) interior cladding, and plywood used to cover prefabricated slabs.
Standardised timber elements were fixed together with screws, intending to make the temporary building easy to demount and reuse: “There are three scenarios – either the building will be dismantled and rebuilt somewhere else, or its parts will be reused,” said Blum.
“If both of these options fail, there is a lot of raw timber and other materials that can be used to create new buildings or let the timber become soil and grow new trees on it,” he said. “Raw timber is biodegradable, unlike treated wood, so even if the building as a whole or in parts will not be reused, it still has a low carbon footprint.”
