ETH House of Natural Resources

Abstract

In timber research, a main objective is the development and promotion of innovative and efficient timber structures. Therefore a pilot building, named ETH House of Natural Resources, has been designed, which implements several innovative structural systems with hardwood. The structural systems are a post-tensioned timber frame, a timber-concrete composite slab with beech LVL, a hollow-core timber-concrete composite slab with beech LVL and a pure timber bi-axial slab with beech CLT. The building functions as an office building for the Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology from ETH Zürich and serves as a showcase building of a sustainable and reliable timber construction for students and researchers, among others.

The building’s long-term performance is monitored with a permanent sensor network, and its short-term performance was measured with dynamic tests at different construction stages. Detailed information about this project is available under https://honr.ethz.ch/.