Adding new storeys of wood: New housing potential for big cities
Due to advancing urbanization, there is an acute lack of living space in many metropolitan German cities. An attractive solution for the creation of new living space is the addition of new storeys made of wood to existing buildings. To make this approach more popular, Metsä Wood has launched the architecture competition "City above the City". Among the prize-winners is the Berlin concept "Dachkiez" by Sigurd Larsen Design & Architecture.
Metropolises such as Berlin, Hamburg and Munich
are popular centres of economic and cultural conurbations, as they offer many
possibilities for an individual lifestyle. Today’s youth are particularly
attracted for studying or choosing their careers in Metropolises, even older
people also appreciate the comprehensive care and the promising leisure
activities arranged in Metropolises. This progressive urbanization trend has
led to an increase in the population figures in all major German cities
impacting a steady rise in residential space requirements.
The population forecast as per the Cologne Institute for Economic Research (Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft Köln), for example, for Berlin is extremely high: Currently, the city has about 3.5 million inhabitants. By 2035 an increase of 14.5 percent is expected, which will increase the population to about 4 million. As a result, urban planners are increasingly faced with the challenge of countering the steady population growth in large cities with new housing estates. But how can this be achieved if cities are already built on a large scale? One option is to enlarge the area of cities, which has led to unattractive outskirts increasingly becoming the urban core. But is this really an option, if, for example, the area of Berlin is already 892 square kilometers? Not really. An attractive alternative here is the creation of new living space as additions to existing buildings, so the roofs of today become plots of tomorrow.