Unique Architectural Features of Asia’s Largest Wooden Building in Singapore

• 30 July 2023
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The Nanyang Technological University (NTU) of Singapore has just officially inaugurated the second-largest wooden building in the world with an area of 43,500 square metres and “the largest wooden building in Asia” in terms of the volume of timber used. The university named this masterpiece “The Gaia Timber” after the Greek goddess of Earth reflecting the building’s focus on sustainability and eco-friendliness, as well as its use of natural materials like wood.

Gaia which costs 125 million Singapore dollars (US$93m) to build, was designed by Japanese Toyo Ito, a Pritzker Architecture Prize-winner, Gaia is formed of two curving blocks containing a 190-seat auditorium and 12 lecture theatres, alongside a series of seminar rooms, laboratories, offices, classrooms and meeting spaces. The building is constructed almost entirely from prefabricated mass timber elements, apart from the toilets, ground-floor slabs and external staircases, which are formed from concrete.

The Gaia Timber Building is a unique architectural masterpiece designed by the Japanese architect Toyo Ito. Here are some of its unique features:

Exposed Timber Frame: The building’s exposed timber frame is free from cladding or paint, which celebrates natural materials and gives visitors the feeling of walking between trees.

Sustainable Design: The building is designed to be eco-friendly and energy-efficient. and its exterior sports shading fins at key points on its facade to reduce solar heat gain. It also has multiple open areas, terraces, and air wells to promote ventilation. An air-conditioning system makes use of Passive Displacement Ventilation (PDV) – a process that does not require mechanical fans to chill a room.

Largest Wooden Building in Asia: The Gaia Timber Building is the largest wooden building in Asia, with a length of 220 metres (721 feet) and a floorspace of 43,500 square metres (roughly 468,000 square feet).  “I always try to envision a connection with and a feeling of nature, such as trees and water, in my designs,” Ito told CNN after the building’s inauguration ceremony.

Zero Energy Building: The building is designated as a “zero energy” building that (with the help of rooftop solar panels) produces as much energy as it consumes. For this reason, it has received Singapore’s Green Mark Platinum (Zero Energy) green building award from the Building and Construction Authority of Singapore, which celebrates buildings that create as much or more energy than they require. Solar panels installed on the rooftop reportedly produce 516,000 kWh of power annually. There are 16 buildings to meet this net-zero standard in the country, and half are located on the NTU campus.

Gaia can be considered a model of contemporary architecture that is modern but natural and uses zero energy and is the only architectural work that shows the potential choice of turning to wood in the construction of high-rise buildings for the freshness of life.

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