Swiss construction company Implania is planning to develop a 100m-tall tower near Zurich that will become the world’s tallest residential building with a load-bearing wooden structure.
The Rocket & Tigerli tower will be built Winterthur, northeast of Zurich. When complete in 2026, the 34,500 sq m development will contain housing, student flats, a restaurant, shops, a sky-bar, and a spa and hotel, and will come complete with green internal courtyard.
The project uses a construction system that replaces concrete with wood in tall structures. This was created by Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects in conjunction with Implenia and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Zürich, ETH.
This allows the concrete core that would normally be used in a building of this height to be replaced with wood. The façade will be clad in dark red and yellow terracotta bricks with dusty green detailing, mirroring the red roofs and yellow bricks of surrounding buildings.
The site of the development, on the Diologplatz, was formerly the Sulzer railway workshop, and the name Rocket & Tigerli is taken from the locomotives that were built there.
