SKELLEFTEA, SWEDEN – A sand-colored tower glitters in the sunlight and dominates the skyline of the Swedish city of Skellefteå when Scandinavia uses its wood resources to lead a global trend towards building environmentally friendly high-rise buildings.
Sara Kulturhus is one of the world’s tallest timber buildings, made mainly of spruce and rises 75 meters above rows of snow-dusted houses and surrounding forest.
The 20-storey log building, which houses a hotel, a library, an exhibition hall and theater stages, opened at the end of 2021 in the northern city of 35,000 inhabitants.
Forests cover large parts of Sweden’s northern regions, mostly spruce, and building log houses is a long tradition.
Swedish architects now want to lead a revolution and steer the industry towards more sustainable construction methods when large wooden buildings emerge in Sweden and the Nordic neighboring countries thanks to advanced industrial technology.
“The pillars together with the beams, the interaction with steel and wood, that is what carries the hotel’s 20 floors,” says Therese Kreisel, an urban construction official in Skellefteå, to AFP during a tour of the culture house.
The elevator shaft is also made entirely of wood. “There is no plaster, no seal, no insulation on the wood,” she says, adding that this “is unique when it comes to a 20-story building.”
Building materials turn green
The biggest advantage of working with wood is that it is more environmentally friendly, the proponents say.
Cement – used to make concrete – and steel, two of the most common building materials, are among the most polluting industries because they emit huge amounts of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas.
But wood emits some CO2 during its production and retains the carbon that is absorbed by the tree even when it is cut and used in a building structure. It is also lighter in weight and requires less foundation.
According to the UN’s climate panel IPCC, wood as a building material can be up to 30 times less carbon-intensive than concrete, and hundreds or even thousands of times less than steel.
Global efforts to reduce emissions have boosted interest in timber structures, according to Jessica Becker, coordinator of Trastad (Trästad), an organization that works for more timber construction.
Skellefteå tower “shows that it is possible to build this high and complex in wood”, says Robert Schmitz, one of the project’s two architects.
‘When you have this as a background for discussions, you can always say,’ We did this, so how can you say it’s not possible? ”
Only an 85 meter high tower that was recently built in Brumunddal in neighboring Norway and an 84 meter long building in Vienna is taller than Sara Cultural Center.
A building that is under construction in the American city of Milwaukee and which will soon be completed is expected to win the title of the world’s tallest, at just over 86 meters.
“Stacked like Lego”
Building the culture house in spruce was “much more challenging” but “has also opened doors to really think in new directions”, explains Schmitz co-architect Oskar Norelius.
For example, the hotel rooms were made as prefabricated modules which were then “stacked as Lego pieces in place”, he says.
The building has won several wooden architecture awards.
Anders Berensson, another Stockholm architect whose choice material is wood, says that wood has many advantages.
“If you miss something in the cut, just take the knife and the saw and sort of adjust them in place. So it is both high-tech and low-tech at the same time, he says.
In Stockholm, there is a wooden apartment complex, called Cederhusen and with distinct yellow and red cedar shavings on the facade, in the final stages of completion.
It has already been named Construction of the Year by the Construction Industry.
“I think we can only see things change in recent years,” Becker said.
“We’re seeing a huge change right now, it’s kind of the turning point. And I hope other countries will catch on, we’re also seeing examples in England and Canada and other parts of the world.
Source: sn.dk