Many MindedSeoul housing cooperative tests prefabricated timber floors in 18 homes
A redevelopment association in Seoul's Seongbuk district has opened a two-storey timber test building at its Jongam-dong site. The Gaewunsan Village group is building 130 homes in a project called Commons Jongam, and 18 of them will be mass timber. General sales are planned to begin next May, with residents due to move in by June 2028 and run the complex as a social cooperative.
The panels are spruce cross-laminated timber made at a Stora Enso plant in Austria and machined to a 3D model, with openings for power points and pipes already cut. Teams of six to eight workers scan each panel's barcode and assemble a floor every two to three days. The timber homes sit one per floor from the fourth floor up in 11- and 13-storey buildings, above a concrete podium and beside a concrete stair core. Walls are 140 to 200 mm thick. The builder says they meet the strength usually required of a 20-storey concrete apartment block. Three layers of fire-rated plasterboard give a two-hour fire rating.
The case for abundance is speed and safety on site. Factory-made parts assembled in days could shorten build times and cut financing costs, and the association's head cites a 2022 concrete-pour collapse in Gwangju as a reason to move work off site. Eight of 29 members chose timber homes, expecting lower heating and cooling bills.
The caveats are large, and cost is the main one. The association says the mid-project switch from concrete, after permits were issued, raised owners' costs. All timber is imported, the screws come from Italy, and the won weakened. Korean-made CLT is reported to cost three times as much as European panels. Korea also has no fire-test standard for timber apartments yet. Sweco, which designed the connections, called the test building unnecessary because the method is proven in Europe. Watch for the sales launch and for noise-floor tests by the National Institute of Forest Science.
Source: Google News