Metsä Wood aims to be the global forerunner in sustainable construction through its innovative wood products, resource efficiency and effective use of renewable materials.
Construction alone uses 50% of the world’s resources and causes 30% of all carbon emissions. We are dedicated to finding ways to use more wood without disrupting the construction process. So that nothing has to change but the material. All construction materials have their benefits and together we can make concrete, steel and timber work as one. But wood is the only material that stores carbon. We need to use more, and we need to find ways to support construction companies to use more wood, while maintaining their efficiency.
The Metsä Pavilion, Tokyo
The Metsä Pavilion, placed on the grounds of the Finnish embassy in Tokyo, was built for serving as a meeting place for Finland’s Olympic team during the Summer Olympic Games. It is a multifunctional facility for many kinds of events: exhibitions, seminars, meetings and concerts. The Pavilion is a joint effort of Metsä Group and Business Finland. Now after the Olympics companies can use the pavilion in their business meetings. It took only two weeks to assemble the load-bearing wooden structure of the Pavilion. This is due to the prefabricated Kerto® LVL elements which make construction fast, light and green.
The Metsä Pavilion is an example of innovative Finnish design based on industrially manufactured timber elements. Similar elements can also be used in buildings of larger scale. The wood for the Metsä Pavilion comes from sustainably managed Finnish forests, that grow more than they are used. In this case the wood comes from a forest in Punkaharju, owned by Jukka Heikkonen.
“It is fun to imagine how the spruce logs first made their way to Metsä Wood’s mill, only some 24 kilometers from our forest,” says Heikkonen. “At the mill, the logs were turned into Kerto® LVL and then delivered to the element manufacturer. The ready-made elements were then shipped to Tokyo. This great building really emphasises the long-term work we have done in managing the forest.”
Sustainable living in Verksbyen – floors and structure built with Kerto® LVL
The whole Verksbyen area in Norway presents the future of sustainable living. Prefabricated Kerto® LVL elements are used in the construction of a block of ecological apartment buildings. Verksbyen will become home for 5,000 people within the next 10 years. It aims to be Norway’s most innovative housing project.
“We have managed to reduce CO2 emissions in a variety of ways,” says Ruben D. Hansen, CEO of Arca Nova Bolig, part of the Arca Nova Group. “The houses are built with timber elements according to the Passivhaus standard, and electricity is produced with solar energy and heating with solar thermal energy.”
In the first three floors, the load bearing structure consists of wall elements, which are made with 67 mm thick Kerto® LVL Q-panels. In addition, Kerto® LVL S-beams have been glued and screwed on the outside of the elements to stiffen and stabilise the construction. The S-beams are also used for installing an insulation layer. In the two top floors, there is a traditional timber frame construction reinforced with cross laminated timber (CLT) plates to take up the loads.
For more information visit: www.metsawood.com
