Triodos Bank’s new office in Driebergen-Rijsenburg, Netherlands, recently won an international BREEAM Award in the Commercial – Post construction category. The building is made entirely of sustainable building materials, including 2,000 m3 of PEFC-certified timber. Source: Timberbiz
BREEAM is an internationally recognised measure of sustainability for buildings and communities. More than 530,000 certificates have been issued under BREEAM on more than 24,000 projects around the world, and over 2.2 million buildings and communities are registered for certification.
All the building elements were registered in a Madaster materials passport, which means that they are suitable for reuse, should the building be dismantled at a future date. This earned the building a BREEAM ‘outstanding’ rating.
The office building was designed by architect Thomas Rau and completed in 2019. It consists of two, three and five-storey towers primarily using PEFC-certified timber, in addition to the steel and glass elements.
The composition and shape of the building was inspired by nature. The building structure, both the low rise and the towers structures, formed a unique wooden construction with wooden floors, wooden lift shafts and wooden supporting columns.
Construction company JP van Eesteren requested timber manufacturer Derix Group to develop the wooden core of the building using 3,200 m2 of cross-laminated timber (CLT) walls, and 1,700 m2 of CLT floors.
Laminated wooden spans were arranged around this core using a triple finger joint, which enabled the supporting structure to be built with timber.
Then 338 laminated roof trusses and 9,500 m2 of floor plates were used in the floor construction, bringing the total volume of PEFC-certified spruce wood used in the project to over 2,000 m3.
The building has been built with the circular economy in mind. It is held together with more than 165,000 screws so that it can be dismantled and reassembled without losing any value in terms of materials, components, or products.
The roof is completely green and the covered parking spaces are equipped with 3,300 m2 of solar panels. The design was produced with specialists from Ex Interiors and landscape architects, Arcadis. The international project developer EDGE Technologies developed the building together with Triodos Bank.
All companies supplying timber to this prize-winning building are PEFC certified.
