This hotel in South Africa is the world’s tallest hemp building

Twelve stories, breathtaking views of Table Mountain and a minimal ecological footprint: in the center of Cape Town will soon rise the world’s tallest building constructed from industrial hemp.

The workers are putting the finishing touches to this future “Hemp Hotel”, a hemp hotel which will have 54 rooms and should be finished in June.

While the building is based on a classic concrete and cement structure, the wood-finished walls are all made from “hempcrete” blocks. A material with multiple properties of insulation and fire resistance, used in particular in Europe in the thermal renovation of buildings, but above all, with a negative carbon footprint.

“The hemp plant absorbs a lot of carbon dioxide, which is then sequestered in a block and stored in a building for about fifty years”, explains Boshoff Muller, the director of Afrimat Hemp, a subsidiary of the construction group sud- African Afrimat, which produced the bricks for the hotel. As a result, hempcrete “sequesters more CO2 than it produces”.