Purpose: Sound and fire are two areas in which additional challenges in high building

structures with wood need to be carried out. The planning stage often requires greater

efforts for architects and engineers to solve technical requirements for buildings with

wooden frames over traditional solutions with concrete. The design decisions get more

complicated with prefabricated wooden elements that are difficult to handle. This leads

to poor management early in the construction process that creates problems.

The goal of this essay is to examine how the design of apartment buildings with wood

and concrete structures of prefabricated elements are affected by sound and fire

requirements.

Method: A qualitative study has been conducted with interviews as a base. It has been

supplemented by document analysis. In order to compare two apartment building

projects, Limnologen and Strandparken, with a fictitious concrete structure, a

comparative study has been carried out.

Findings: The technical solutions do not affect the design in a problematic way. The

technical solutions solve problems without being problematic during the design process

for architects. It is mainly the timber floors dimension that becomes larger and thus

higher floor height, to solve noise problems. Architects should have knowledge about

this early to avoid a disproportional design of the building.

Generally, more knowledge is needed in the construction and design process and the

aspects of the projection and construction phase with wooden frames need to be taken

into account.

Implications: The effects of large dimensions will be slightly larger wooden timber

floors and impact the storey height. It leads to greater distances between floors and

creates a different design expression of the facade.

Limitations: This work is limited to only apply to apartment buildings with eight

floors. For best results to apply, the buildings must have a frame of solid wood.

Keywords: Wooden frames, wooden buildings, solid wood, vibration and structureborne

sound, airborne sound, the design of wooden buildings, noise problems, fire

problems, Strandparken, Limnologen.