A Seven-Storey Timber Structure - Testing the Limits of the Building Code

This residential building in Berlin is, from a technical construction point-of-view, a first: it is the first seven-story wooden construction in Europe. As Berlin’s building regulations currently allow only five-story wooden constructions, it was clear from the very beginning that the realisation of such a project would not be easy. For this reason, a fire protection concept for the construction project was conceived very early in the planning phase and the responsible authorities were involved in the planning process from an early stage. The three key elements for the fire protection concept are the very short and completely smoke-free escape routes; the significant increase in fire resistance of the wooden components through complete fire resistance sheathing without any cavities with gypsum fibre slabs; and smoke detectors.