The cafeteria of a new high school in Helsinki smells like a lush pine forest, and it’s not air freshener.
What happens is that most of the five-story building was built with wood.
The school will be completed next year, but smooth wood paneling already lines many of the interior walls.
Wood was also used in the load-bearing structures, to support the roofs between floors, and as exterior cladding.
“It’s a more sustainable option,” says Miimu Airaksinen, an engineer and vice president of development at SRV, the Finnish construction company in charge of the school.
“But we’re also working with wood because it’s a nice material and people like it.”
The project is part of a growing trend in the Finnish construction industry.
Property developers are increasingly switching from more common materials, such as concrete and steel, in favor of wood.
The trend is linked to the country’s ambitious efforts to achieve carbon neutrality by 2035 and become Europe’s leading circular economy.
With three quarters of the land in Finland covered by forests, wood is a readily available material here, although it needs to be reinforced to be used in tall and medium buildings.
In Finland, where wooden country houses and summer cabins are common, there is less public concern about fire than in other parts of the world that are less used to using wood as a building material.
SRV still faces doubts about the flammability of this material, especially in taller buildings.
However, there is plenty of evidence that cross-laminated timber (CLT) works well on fires, Airaksinen says, as it is designed to withstand high levels of heat and can collapse more slowly compared to concrete.
At the high school construction site, Airaksinen’s team is busy cutting CLT boards, which are produced by joining layers of wood panels at right angles.
“You’re making the wood stiffer, and that makes it much stronger,” he explains.
Derivatives of wood, such as CLT, have a variety of environmental benefits, which include being much lighter than many building materials, so less heavy machinery and energy is needed during construction.
Buildings can also be completed faster as there is no drying phase as there is with concrete.
Furthermore, wooden buildings actually remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than they emit; they can retain the carbon that trees absorb from the atmosphere for five to six decades. By contrast, steel and concrete leave huge carbon footprints.
“Really can help us with climate changesays Ali Amiri, a sustainable buildings researcher at Aalto University near Helsinki and a former civil engineer.
“If we make a comparison of wooden buildings with other buildings like concrete or steel or even brick buildings, [la madera tiene] between 20 and 30% less greenhouse gas emissions. So this is very good news.”
According to his team’s research, if 80% of new residential buildings in Europe were made of wood, they could store up to 55 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.
That is equivalent to almost half of the annual emissions from the continent’s cement industry.
Wood derivatives such as CLT have been used in Europe since the 1990s, but have seen a resurgence in Finland thanks to a government-backed wood construction program designed to ensure that 45% of public buildings use wood as a key material by 2025.
Promoters can apply for grants and obtain support for tasks such as procurement and risk communication.
I think that all companies [aquí] they are making wooden buildings today,” says Airaksinen. “There is pressure for sustainability.”
Gypsum board, which is made of limestone and is non-flammable, is used in the high school. to add an extra layer of protection on interior walls of the upper floors.
“We have to take fire safety seriously,” says Airaksinen. “We also did a lot of simulations on evacuation and durability in case there is a fire.”
Timber’s popularity is also expanding in the private sector. Data from the Finnish Timber Industries Federation suggests that it is already a key material in 4% of apartments and 16% of commercial buildings.
In the city center of Helsinki there is even a new neighborhood, Madera City, with hundreds of new Madera apartments.
It’s also home to the headquarters of Finnish gaming giant Supercell, where huge carved wooden characters and dramatic paneling create a striking reception area.
There wood lines the walls of eight stories of open space offices, cafes and even nap rooms.
Cybersecurity company WithSecure is in the process of building a new office next door, in collaboration with SRV and Stora Enso, a major Finnish producer of wood products.
And, perhaps least surprisingly, in a country where people love to sweat, one of Helsinki’s most popular leisure activities is a complex with a gigantic sauna and wooden restaurants.
Opened in 2016, the Löyly complex has won multiple world awards for its striking wooden structure in the shape of a cloak, which allows visitors to climb onto the terrace of its sloping roof.
Environmental groups such as WWF have expressed concern that increasing the construction of wooden buildings could put too much pressure on the planet’s forests.
“From a climate perspective, it’s a good way to store carbon, but on the other hand we’re increasing the overall level of consumption of natural resources,” says Mai Suominen, one of WWF’s leading forest experts.
“Because obviously we also need other wood-based products, such as paper or packaging material, [y] Yeah we plan to increase another production, we are increasing the level of felling”.
Timber companies in Finland have committed to replanting logged areas in a sensitive and sustainable way. However, Suominen argues that there is still a risk of lower biodiversity if production increases in the future, which could have an impact on both animals and humans.
“Then the forest processes at some point break down and are not as flexible to respond to changing environmental conditions caused by climate change. We will face more rains, more droughts and plagues of insects”.
Sustainability expert Nani Pajunen of the Finnish Sitra Innovation Fund agrees that it is important that construction companies in Finland and other countries do not jump on the bandwagon of the wooden building trend in an effort to appear more ecological.
She argues that it is more important for companies to carry out comprehensive assessments of the carbon footprint of their production processes and the different potentials of material life cycles.
For example, other recent innovations designed to improve sustainability in the sector, such as recyclable concrete and steel, could be more durable than wood in large-scale projects, such as very tall apartment blocks, public places or bridges.
“It is not a matter of black or white about what [materiales] They are right and wrong,” he argues. “It’s about attitude. You have to think, if you are an engineer in the construction sector, how to use materials in a more sustainable way.”
Despite environmental concerns, the timber construction industry is growing, with other Nordic countries, Germany, Canada and the US in particular, increasing their production in recent years.
Market research firm Fortune Business Insights recently valued the CLT market at $806 million and forecast 14% growth by 2028.
In the aftermath of the Ukraine war, which increased the global cost of steel and energy, Amiri says his research team also noticed an increase in inquiries from companies and strategists around the world.
While Amiri predicts that construction of timber buildings will “definitely increase” in Europe and North America in the coming years, she notes that building with timber derivatives for multi-story projects is still “a bit more expensive” than using higher grade materials. common.
This, he argues, could make it more difficult persuade countries with access to cheap concrete and steel to change direction.
Back to the forklifts and bulldozers that continue to transform the SRV school construction site, Airaksinen says he expects the timber construction sector to rise along with the development of new low-carbon materials.
“We are focusing on the construction of sustainable buildings and buildings with an intelligent life cycle”, he indicates. “That’s the future.”
Source: Eluniverso
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
