For a site at Hafen City, we developed a scheme for a highly sustainable housing block for a collective ‘baugruppe’. The brief asked for an innovative, sustainable and family friendly building for 28 households, with wood as its main building material. The question for an explicitly wooden building confronted us with an unexpected contradiction. Whilst Germany is known for its position on the forefront of sustainable design, regulations are still conservative and limit the use of exposed wood construction in building interiors.