Amsterdam
Netherlands
The country’s most robust economic region | 2.5 million people – more than 14% of Dutch population live in the Metropolitan Region Amsterdam (MRA)
© Robin Wood - ANA architecten and Marc Koehler Architects
Cooperation with Build-in-Wood
The Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam is officially one of seven Early Adopter Cities of the Build-in-Wood project.
To this point, MRA signed the letter of commitment and provided critical information on the current status of timber as a building material, related projects and challenges to be addressed. The ambition of the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam is to construct 20% off all the new planned residential housing in wood, by 2025. An estimation is to construct 1.500 houses in wood per year, by 2025.
The Challenge
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Overcoming knowledge gap how to construct in wood
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Accelerate wooden construction to make it compatible to conventional construction
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Lack of supporting and financial regulation
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True pricing; outdated frameworks
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Accounting for stored carbon and monitoring health and well-being effects
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Reaching the ambitions of the Green Deal Houtbouw & Roadmap Amsterdam Climate Neutral 2050
Build-in-Wood Focus
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Policy development regarding wood buildings
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Timber-positive tendering
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Standardization – development of efficient and safe structural / customizable buildings
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Integral assessment of sustainability on a systems level
Project status: 1st workshop completed
Key Build-in-Wood Partner
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URBASOFIA
Urban Planning Agency
In an intensive public-private collaboration with market parties, public organizations and knowledge institutes, we can overcome with wooden construction multiple challenges as a region: reaching climate goals, accelerate housing production, innovation of the construction value chain and renewing employment in construction.
Thijs Kroese
Chairman of MRA
About Amsterdam
The capital city of the Netherlands, Amsterdam, was first inhabited as early as the 14th century. At its origin, the city was a small settlement at the river the Amstel and has grown into a business hub of innovation, of smart and green growth, with a strong emphasis on sustainability. In the last years, the city kept expanding, together with the surrounding municipality. Since 2009 a partnership started between the 31 municipalities in the form of the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam.
Past and present
The region started to collaborate in an intensive way to aim for a strong and sustainable region. This region works on challenges such as low-emission mobility, the residential housing demand, sustainable energy needs, etc. Especially the residential housing demand is rapidly increasing, which raises the need for new solutions for housing and building industry.
@ Switi - BPD
@ Switi - BPD
Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam and wood
Amsterdam is famous for its brick buildings, but at its origin wood was the main material used for construction. However, the medieval wood houses were vulnerable to fire, and they were devasted in the fires of 1421 and 1452. After that, brick as a construction material was preferred, and in 1669 timber construction was banned outright. In present, wood has a comeback, helping Amsterdam reach the ambitions of the Green Deal Houtbouw and to become Climate Neutral by 2050.
