Tall & Urban News

Eiffage Immobilier, with the architect Jean-Paul Viguier, have delivered what could be among the tallest residential towers in france using structural timber in France. Called Hyperion, the Bordeaux building features 17 stories and 100 apartments. 

Designed by architect Jean-Paul Viguier, the building is part of a mixed housing complex of 182 housing units, car parks, shops and offices, all spread across four buildings.

Duly labeled by the State as an "Industrial Demonstrator for the Sustainable City", this 50-meter-high timber composite/concrete construction was awarded a BIM d'Or in 2019 for its BIM design.

The project began in 2015, as part of the development of the Bordeaux Euratlantique National Interest Operation (OIN), when the Bordeaux Euratlantique public planning establishment (EPA) launched a call for projects that used structural timber in tall buildings and advanced the timber industry.

Eiffage Construction achieved construction by combining a concrete base on three levels with a concrete core, atop which sits a wooden structure made up of glued laminated beams (BLC), floors constructed with cross-laminated wood panels (CLT), and 304 solid walls. Its construction, partly prefabricated, used more than 1,500 components produced off-site, including façade elements in the workshops of Savare, a subsidiary of Eiffage Construction. 

The construction of Hyperion will have required 1,400 cubic meters of solid wood from New Aquitaine. Wood waste was recovered on the Noé inter-site shared services platform, set up by Eiffage and Suez in 2018. This E3C2 level operation, using the construction solution chosen, will store at least 1,400 tonnes (1.543 tons) of carbon dioxide over its lifetime.

For more on this story, go to Le Moniteur.