Congratulations to Codi Group on completing a lengthy and challenging build in Cardiff’s City Road. Back in 2024 our Social Housing Developers Community of Practice got the chance to visit the development built with an engineered timber frame made from cross laminated timber or CLT, a product made from five layers of solid timber glued together, to make a rigid, strong, lightweight and low carbon alternative to concrete and steel. The Cascade has now been completed and letting has begun. Originally developed by Linc Cymru the building will be one of the newest completed under Codi Group’s ownership. Codi has been created by the merger of Pobl Group with Linc Cymru.
The Cascade is a £10.9M project, part funded by Welsh Government through the Innovative Housing Programme and Social Housing Grant. The 48 1-bedroom apartments designed by Cardiff practice Powell Dobson Architects and built by Langstone Construction Group will be let and managed by Cardiff Council under an agreement with Codi Group.
The Cascade’s CLT structure provides the inner skin of the building’s external walls, all main internal load bearing and compartment walls, floors, roof deck and roof top terraces. The structure sits on reinforced concrete piled foundations with concrete pile caps and ground beams. Structural steel is used for large spans and the stair and lift core which will home steel stairs and external landings. The outer leaf of its external walls is faced in brickwork with coated metal cladding to landings and above roof terraces. The windows are uPVC.
Designed with biophilic considerations in mind, the building has plants growing in containers on its facade with an irrigation system and a green roof with photovoltaic panels. The internal space and water is electrically heated, with a mechanical ventilation and heat recovery (MVHR) system to bring fresh air into the building and capture the heat energy in the stale air as it leaves.
Sadly the building’s CLT structure isn’t visible but it’s good to know that its use has lowered its carbon footprint. One of the solutions to the climate crisis is to store carbon in the built environment – growing trees capture carbon from the atmosphere as they grow and when they are felled for construction timber the carbon remains stored.
Images by Langstone Construction Group
If you want to know more about CLT and other types of engineered timber, please get in touch.
