BIG’s ‘wooden hillside’ residential building in Stockholm officially opens

The idea behind Bjarke Ingels Group’s 79&Park in Stockholm was to create an inhabitable landscape of cascading residences that combines the touches of a suburban home with urban living. The resulting structure, referred to as a “wooden hillside,” provides 169 residential units, almost all with unique layouts, across approximately 270,000 sf.

79&Park’s tallest corner is 35-meters-tall to maximize the amount of natural daylight that reaches the interior garden space and units while the shortest corner is just seven-meters-tall. From a distance, these varying heights give the building the look of a manmade hillside extending toward the Gärdet national park. The building is made up of a series of 3.6 meter by 3.6 meter modules that are organized around the central open green courtyard. The courtyard includes a series plateaus that vary in size to create activity pockets and spaces for amenities, such as a dog daycare, a preschool, and bicycle racks.

Aerial view of 76&Park Photo: Laurian Ghinitoiu.

The units feature white oak floors, ceramic granite in the bathrooms, natural stone in the kitchens, and large windows that create a smooth transition between the indoors and the outdoors. Every unit in the building has access to private and shared roof terraces planted with a variety of trees, bushes, and flowers. 79&Park’s ground floor features commercial space open to the public.

79&Park terrace Photo: Laurian Ghinitoiu.

The interior courtyard of 79&Park Photo: Laurian Ghinitoiu.

79&Park as seen from the neighboring national park Photo: Laurian Ghinitoiu.

The Tampa Bay Rays Major League Baseball team announced that it has reached an agreement with St. Petersburg and Pinellas County on a $6.5 billion, 86-acre mixed-use development that will include a new 30,000-seat ballpark and an array of office, housing, hotel, retail, and restaurant space totaling 8 million sf.

Engineers | Sep 15, 2023

NIST investigation of Champlain Towers South collapse indicates no sinkhole

Investigators from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) say they have found no evidence of underground voids on the site of the Champlain Towers South collapse, according to a new NIST report. The team of investigators have studied the site’s subsurface conditions to determine if sinkholes or excessive settling of the pile foundations might have caused the collapse.

MFPRO+ Research | Sep 11, 2023

Conversions of multifamily dwellings to ‘mansions’ leading to dwindling affordable stock

Small multifamily homes have historically provided inexpensive housing for renters and buyers, but developers have converted many of them in recent decades into larger, single-family units. This has worsened the affordable housing crisis, say researchers.

Deciphering the Differences in Smart Lock Networks

Adaptive Reuse | Aug 31, 2023

New York City creates team to accelerate office-to-residential conversions

New York City has a new Office Conversion Accelerator Team that provides a single point of contact within city government to help speed adaptive reuse projects. Projects that create 50 or more housing units from office buildings are eligible for this new program.