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Construction systems

The close cooperation between planners and manufacturers in serial construction has been increasingly perfected over the last ten to fifteen years. For owners, the list of advantages reads like a recipe for success:

• cost certainty and efficiency
• minimized construction time
• less resource consumption and waste
• flexibility of use through subsequent adaptation and reparability of buildings

One material has gained the most attention in the context of prefabricated construction in recent years, and that is timber construction. Here, the list can be extended by many more points:

• CO2 reduction through a renewable raw material
• high degree of prefabrication
• low weight with high load-bearing capacity of the structure
• recyclability through possible dismantling and separation by type
• easier approvals, for example for fire protection, thanks to standardized production and thus also
• use in higher building classes

Last but not least, the material is suitable for existing buildings, whether for extensions, serial renovation, or storey additions as a method of redensification in urban areas.

From components to housing modules: prefabricated, serial construction methods are considered an effective means of overcoming the obstacles that came up in the construction sector in recent years: scarce resources, a shortage of skilled workers, and rising material costs continue to be the biggest challenges when it comes to achieving target figures of creating new space.

The practice of building architecture on an industrial scale, which emerged in the early 20th century, has long since overcome the negative image of slab construction or stacked containers. In fact, the opposite is true. Elements prefabricated in the factory are not mass-products, but individually designed systems that are planned with foresight, intelligently assembled, and creatively diverse, conceived in a digital process from the initial idea to reuse.

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Building with regeneratives

The construction industry continues to face major challenges: It consumes a good third of global raw materials, causes just as many CO₂ emissions and produces over 50% of waste. Regenerative architecture offers solutions by utilising renewable materials such as wood and clay, the circular economy and innovative construction methods. The aim is to conserve resources, reduce waste and create future-proof life cycles for buildings – a key to ecological, social and economic sustainability.

Around 40 % of global raw material consumption and CO₂ emissions as well as over 50 % of annual waste volumes can be attributed to the construction sector. In view of these burdens, regenerative architecture is becoming increasingly important. The focus here is on the use of renewable materials, a functioning circular economy and innovative construction methods to promote ecological, social and economic sustainability.

When we at Dietrich Untertrifaller talk about building with regenerative materials, we have in mind materials that are renewable, locally available and resource-saving – such as wood, clay or bamboo. These building materials are characterised by low grey energy, CO₂ binding and reusability. A central approach here is the circular economy: we plan buildings in such a way that the materials can be reused or recycled at the end of the building's service life. This significantly reduces the amount of waste and extends the utilisation cycles of the materials. Sounds simple? However, there is often a lack of standardised certification for sustainable materials, which has made it difficult to use them to date.

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We don't have the need to fail on climate crisis

Dominik Philipp is certain, we automatically act sustainably if we respond to our needs. Anja Koller spoke to him about the challenge of designing today’s architecture for tomorrow, about creating flexibility for construction and use and why no other material can keep up with wood in terms of precision.

An interview about update-capable buildings, networking and the flexibility of wood by Anja Koller, Competitionline

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The timber roof of the TUM Campus in Munich's Olympic Park

With a roof area of 22,000 m² and built with 5200 m³ of construction timber, the TUM Campus is one of Europe's biggest timber structures. Its trademark is the 150 metres wide roof with a cantilever of nearly 19 metres and consisting of 40 prefabricated hollow box girders.

The TUM Campus is the greatest construction project developed in Munich's Olympiapark since the 1972 Olympics. The overall concept of the building and the sports facilities spanning 20 hectar was developed by the landscape planners Balliana-Schubert and the architects Helmut Dietrich and Much Untertrifaller (MU). Konrad Merz, Gordian Kley (GK) and Bertram Käppeler (BK) of merz kley partner were responsible for the structural engineering.

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