About project Koelmalaan

Koelmalaan, commissioned by Woonwaard and completed in 2023, has 129 social and mid-rent apartments and is one of the largest wooden residential buildings in the Netherlands.

The building consists of 260 wooden modules spread over five layers and accounting for 12,000 m² living area. There are three housing types: studios of 31m² and three- and four-bedroom apartments ranging from 61 to 81 m². A common courtyard garden with greenhouse connects the two building sections.

The facade is constructed of circular materials, with wood on the inside and soundproof glass and mineral strips on the outside. The roofs are equipped with solar panels, and the apartments are connected to a heat grid and equipped with heat recovery. Heating is completely gasless.

Thanks to modular construction, on-site inconvenience was reduced and construction time was very short, at the peak 10 modules were placed per day. By using CLT (Cross Laminated Timber) instead of concrete, 6,500 tons of CO₂ saved - comparable to 16,640 air trips between Amsterdam and Rome! The buildings are also demountable, reusable, relocatable and flexibly rearrangeable.

About the Day of Wood Construction

Biobased building necessary to keep construction going

The first national Day of Timber Construction will take place on Saturday, June 21, 2025, not entirely coincidentally at the same time as Construction Day. Throughout the country, innovative timber construction projects and residential factories will open their doors to the public. Visitors can experience timber construction up close: see, feel and smell it. Feeling wood!

Timber construction is no longer a future - it is now!
With this event, initiators want to drive the necessary acceleration towards bio-based construction. Timber construction is no longer a future - it is now. "We are going - must even - go from concrete to fiber," says Jetske Thielen, sustainability transition expert at Wood Building Spring. "This day shows that wood construction is a mature building method, ready for substantial scale-up." Retrieved from www.dagvandehoutbouw.nl read more information.

Promising solution
The Netherlands faces a huge housing challenge, but traditional construction methods are bogged down by nitrogen, resource scarcity and emissions. Building with wood offers a promising solution to make the construction industry drastically more sustainable, significantly reduce its CO2 emissions, build more homes faster and even keep construction going:

Wood stores CO₂ instead of emitting it;

Timber construction is much lighter, which means less heavy construction traffic;
Prefabricated modules significantly speed up the construction process up to 2x faster construction;
Wood is abundant in sustainably managed European forests;
Wood is price competitive with traditional construction certainly ground-up;
Wood construction is ideally suited for combination with biobased insulation;
That's why Building Balance is our partner in this initiative.

The Day of Timber Construction is an initiative of eight Brabant housing associations that together form the network Timber Construction Spring forming. A network committed to honest building and wonderful living. Of course in wood construction They realize over 1,000 homes in serial wood construction. On Saturday, June 21, Alwel, Zayaz and Tiwos (all three part of Houtbouw Lente) will open their projects to visitors. In addition, ten other corporations across the country are participating.