Smartware CLT Office building

*Spatial comfort and speed*

The starting point of the project was entirely pragmatic. The company’s rapidly growing team was occupying all available office spaces in Oradea, yet none of them provided the conditions required for programmers spending eight hours a day working with their minds. The client set two clear requirements: the quality of the working environment had to be significantly superior to any office the employees had previously experienced, and the building had to be completed in less than one year, so that teams scattered across the city could work together under one roof.

This second requirement dictated the choice of structural system. CLT, with its industrial prefabrication and rapid assembly, was the only viable solution for such a tight construction schedule. The first discussions took place at the end of 2018. The architectural concept was selected a few months later. The building permit was issued in spring 2019, and construction began in May. From the initial sketch to occupancy, less than 300 days passed.

*A building shaped by the terrain*

The sloped site, previously occupied by orchards, became the main driver of the architectural concept. Instead of leveling the land, the architects folded the building into the contour lines: four staggered platforms, organized over a ground floor and a partial upper level, arranged around small interior courtyards. The preference for a low-rise configuration also came from the client: in a multi-storey building, teams are separated by floors and lose communication; on a single level, interaction becomes inevitable.

Architect Gabriel Chiș-Bulea describes the volumetric composition as an overlay of two matrices: the contour line matrix dictated by the slope of the land, and the functional matrix of the program. The building’s modularity—12-meter work modules, each accommodating around 35 workstations, with three modules forming a unit for approximately 120 people—directly references the orderly rows of fruit trees in the surrounding orchards, which define the landscape and give rhythm to the hills when seen from a distance.

*Structure as finish*

The most impactful decision—both aesthetically and technically—was to leave the CLT structure exposed. “It would be a pity not to use wood at its true value,” the architect notes, observing that internationally CLT is often concealed behind gypsum board. In SMARTWARE, the structural timber panels are left visible and become the interior finish itself.

For this reason, the timber lamellas were specified to a visible grade, and structural design became a fully interdisciplinary coordination exercise, as on-site adjustments were no longer possible. Every element had to be confirmed for production with final dimensions, chamfers, milling, and service openings—often before architectural details were fully finalized. The project became a true technical tour de force for the engineers.

Inginerie Creativă completed the structural design in just 21 days, working closely with the architectural team. Construction figures complete the story: approximately 890 m³ of cross-laminated timber, corresponding to 820 CLT panels manufactured in Austria in four days and transported by 25 trucks. The installation team from General ProConstruct Cluj—10 workers—assembled the structure in 44 days, achieving a final deviation of just 16 mm over roughly 160 meters of continuous walls.

To optimize assembly, Inginerie Creativă produced detailed manuals and video guides for each stage, including crane positioning strategies to minimize repositioning. The IC team remained permanently present on site throughout construction. The result is, according to the engineers, the largest fully exposed timber structure in this part of Europe. In terms of height regime, the building reaches the maximum limit allowed by Romanian fire safety regulation P118 for exposed timber structures.

*Envelope details: wood, water, and earth*

The building is partially embedded into the hillside, making timber protection against moisture a dominant technical concern. The reinforced concrete slab rests on a 2,000 m³ layer of foamed recycled glass aggregate, which functions simultaneously as thermal insulation, load-bearing layer, and capillary break when thicker than 20 cm.

Above the slab, a hardwood leveling layer treated in autoclave protects the CLT structure above. For the retaining walls, where final soil levels were not fully known at the time of fabrication, multiple safety layers were introduced: a ventilated façade with cement boards mounted on spacers, creating an air gap for moisture evacuation; two layers of cold-applied bituminous waterproofing; XPS thermal insulation; and an additional EPDM membrane applied directly to the exterior CLT surface.

The ventilated timber façade—20 cm of rigid mineral wool clad in timber boarding—extends the material language of the interior and resonates with traditional village fences treated with oil for weather protection. UV aging was intentionally accepted: the wood will gradually shift from beige to grey, integrating the building into its natural lifecycle.

The non-accessible green roof returns excavated soil to the landscape. Its layering—EPDM waterproofing, 20 cm insulation, aluminum vapor barrier—created one of the most delicate junctions of the project: the interface between a closed diffusion system roof and vapor-open walls, resolved through a vapor control layer with differentiated properties.

*Unintentional passive house*

Although Passive House performance was not part of the initial brief, all details were designed according to Passivhaus principles: thermal bridge-free envelope, full PHPP calculation, triple-glazed aluminum windows with aerogel-based thermal break. The airtightness test confirmed 0.28 air changes per hour—a result that surprised even the design team, leading to certification. Heating demand reached 27 kWh/m²/year, cooling demand 18 kWh/m²/year, reported to a reference usable area of 1,700 m².

The real challenge was limiting primary energy demand, as the server room alone consumes twice as much energy as the entire building.

Ground-source heat pumps were selected for cooling, while renewable energy production systems were planned for a later phase.

*Lessons from a fast-track construction site*

The less photogenic part of the project is, for specialists, the most instructive.

Construction took place in parallel with design: while concrete was being poured in one area, CLT was being installed in another, and technical solutions sometimes reached the site just one day before execution.

Project manager George Micruț summarizes the outcome: the final technical package delivered—HVAC systems—also confirmed budget overruns. Without a complete design, there is no final budget or time for comparative tendering; decisions are made under pressure, based on immediate availability rather than optimal solutions.

The declared lesson: on future projects, construction will not start before design and budgeting are fully completed.

The tools that kept the project under control were weekly coordination meetings—first design meetings, later site meetings—with representatives from all disciplines. Permanent on-site presence of design teams and the ability to justify decisions with data rather than subjective arguments (“good/bad”) were also critical.

The most critical moment was window installation during winter: triple-glazed units weighing 600–800 kg, handled with suction lifters, often under terraces in difficult positions. The project concluded just as the pandemic began, allowing the recently moved-in employees to work from home while the construction team finalized exterior works.

Beyond numbers, SMARTWARE demonstrates a precedent for Romania: a 250-person corporate program can be delivered as a low-rise exposed timber building on an orchard-covered hillside, at certified energy performance standards, within one year. Everything else is fine-tuning: a CO₂ sensor added to a meeting room, an HVAC grille shifted three meters to the right. Precisely the kind of adjustments that only a building conceived as a coherent system—from structure to detail—can accommodate.