Tall & Urban News

Advances in wooden construction techniques have enabled tall timber towers to grow in cities throughout the world. Urban Agency's Dock Mill proposal for Dublin is slated for the roof of a 19th century industrial mill on the Irish capital's waterfront.

Assuming all goes ahead as planned, Dock Mill will consist of the original mill, which stands at 22 meters (72 feet) in height, and the timber tower itself. This will be built on top of the mill's roof and will be constructed from prefabricated CLT (cross-laminated timber), extending the building upward a further 50 meters (164 feet), or thereabouts.

To put this into perspective, the wooden tower structure alone would be taller than Australia's 25 King and just slightly under Canada's Brock Commons, which was recently the world's tallest timber tower, underlining the dizzying rate of change in this area of architecture. However, Norway's Mjøstårnet remains the current world's tallest all-timber tower at an impressive 85.4 meters (280 feet).

The interior of the old mill will host residential apartments. The building is in a state of dilapidation, so Urban Agency will freshen things up and improve access with a new boardwalk. The tower's interior will be mostly given over to office space, with the exception of the uppermost two floors, which will host a winter garden. In addition to the use of sustainably-sourced timber, solar panels are mooted by the firm as a potential sustainability feature.

"The use of sustainably sourced timber presents a critical environmental advantage over other materials," explains Urban Agency, which is based in Dublin. "Its natural lightweight allows for ease of transportation, reducing the building's carbon footprint and enables off-site prefabrication for a less disruptive construction process in the dense urban fabric of the docklands. Moreover, its light and tensile qualities render timber the perfect solution for an innovative addition to the existing historical mill, exemplifying the potential to reuse and preserve our national architectural legacy and simultaneously meet the demand to create more space by extending upwards rather than out."

Dock Mill is currently awaiting planning permission and Urban Agency hopes to go forward with the project. 

For more on this story, go to New Atlas.