More wooden archi­tecture in schools and hospitals

Within the Swiss real estate market, healthcare and educa­tional buildings are playing an increasing role in terms of timber construction — here is an overview of what this means in economic terms.

Besides the ecological aspects, the choice of wood as a building material has several other advan­tages, such as good tactile qualities and providing a pleasant indoor climate. The well-being of children, school­children, and students in interior spaces is becoming an increasing consid­er­ation in the design of new buildings. Wood is even said to improve the ability to concen­trate. Patients also benefit from this natural building material, as it is said to have a positive effect on the healing process, and modular wood construction offers numerous advan­tages too.

An increasing number of investors

Educa­tional buildings include not just schools for compulsory and tertiary education, but also places for childcare, further education and student housing, as well as special premises such as libraries. The largest owner of educa­tional real estate – and the most important investor in this segment – is the public sector. Wüest Partner has estimated its portfolio to be around CHF 90 billion in 2020. It is respon­sible for 89% of building permit applications1 in the education sector, most of which are for public schools. Other investors include incor­po­rated (AGs) and limited (GmbHs) companies (4%), founda­tions (3%), and also private individuals (1%). These investors usually combine educa­tional spaces with those for other uses.

Investors play a more active role in healthcare buildings than in educa­tional facil­ities. In hospital construction, incor­po­rated and limited companies are the main type of owners (61%), ahead of associations/foundations (20%) and the public sector (18%).² Wüest Partner estimates that healthcare buildings account for around 5–10% of the residential market. The transition from the open market to retirement housing is fluid. Healthcare buildings include healthcare facil­ities and homes (1553³), senior residences, and clinics and hospitals (276²). Overall, the real estate market for healthcare buildings is attracting increas­ingly more investors. 

Market share of wood construction

The market share of wooden load-bearing struc­tures in new, non-residential construction has remained stable since 2019, at around 10.5%. To date, wood continues to be used most for agricul­tural buildings, followed by healthcare buildings in second place and educa­tional, cultural, and recre­ational buildings in third place.

Compared to previous years, the market share of wood in healthcare buildings has risen sharply and, at 15.6%, is higher than ever before. Here, the shares of wood and light­weight construction are in the same order of magnitude, with peaks sometimes alter­nating. To what extent load-bearing construc­tions made of wood will serve as an alter­native to (temporary) light­weight construc­tions in healthcare buildings or establish themselves in (replacement) new buildings will become apparent in the coming years. However, pioneering projects, such as the new building for the Children’s Hospital in Zurich or the Aarhus Residents’ House in Gümlige, Bern, have already begun laying the founda­tions.

The use of wood in educa­tional buildings has risen to just over 10% (currently 11.6%).

Modular buildings in the healthcare and education sector

Modular wood construction is partic­u­larly suitable for the creation of temporary struc­tures that help maintain healthcare or educa­tional facil­ities during a building project. These temporary struc­tures can be erected quickly due to their high degree of prefab­ri­cation, and are easy to dismantle and remove. In the best case, they can even be reassembled and reused in other locations. Moreover, lower loads and often the omission of a basement simplify complex and costly civil engineering work.

Modular buildings are also suitable for use as permanent instal­la­tions with repet­itive basic struc­tures, as is often the case with healthcare and educa­tional buildings. Thus, class­rooms and patient rooms can be designed efficiently. In fact, modular buildings are gaining more recog­nition in educa­tional construction, which the numbers reflect. In the last ten years, a total of 46 modular healthcare buildings have been submitted for approval, 14 (30%) of which were wood. The number of educa­tional buildings is much higher: 246 projects involved modular construction, 88 of which were made of wood. The investment amount for wooden modular buildings for health and education facil­ities does show strong fluctu­a­tions over the years. Never­theless, over the period from 2012 to 2022, an impressive 34% (341 million of 1000 million CHF) of the investment was spent on wooden modular buildings.

Notes

1. Period 2017–2020
   Key figures of Swiss hospitals 3/2022 
2. Federal office for statistics, 2020 

This article origi­nally appeared in espaz­ium’s special issue “​​Stadt aus Holz — Bildungs­bauten aus Holz”.

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