Category Archives: Wood, Paper & Green Building

Aotearoa’s largest modern timber office building is taking shape in the heart of Tauranga’s central business district as the region undergoes a transformation. The building will be eight storeys once completed and will be leased by Tauranga City Council. It’s being built by property development and investment company Willis Bond, and LT McGuinness. It will feature rainwater harvesting, electric charging and is about 2500 tonnes lighter than an equivalent sized building. Mark McGuinness said it’s basically a “hybrid structure” which will reduce its carbon footprint by about 50%. “The guys on site are telling us that it’s quieter, it’s cleaner and it’s a heck of a lot more civilised than a normal building site where you’ve got a lot of noise a lot of banging and crashing.”

Tall buildings pose a unique challenge to sustainability because they offer both positive and negative environmental impacts. Positive impacts include reducing urban sprawl, promoting alternative transportation, and allowing efficient energy use on a district scale. But these benefits come at the cost of emitting more carbon dioxide to produce the required materials and to construct the building. …Tall buildings have typically been constructed using steel or concrete, but what if there was an alternative that could boost the positive impact of the high-rise? Architecture and engineering firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and researchers from Oregon State University recently launched a research project investigating the performance characteristics of a hybrid wood and concrete structural floor system that may offer the industry a traditional flat plate construction alternative. The study authors noted that structural systems once considered impractical with wood are now feasible, due to their improved engineering properties.

The world’s first full-scale timber wind turbine has started turning in Sweden, with a tower built by wood technology company Modvion. The 105-metre-tall tower, located in the region of Skara, is Modvion’s first commercial wind turbine tower, and follows on from a smaller 30-metre-high demonstration project the company completed in 2020. While its rotor blades and generator hub are made of conventional materials, the tower is made of laminated veneer lumber (LVL).  The company says that this type of wood is not only strong enough to withstand the forces of a turning turbine, it is much more environmentally sustainable to build with than the currently used steel. Modvion describes its wood towers as reducing the carbon emissions from wind turbine construction by over 100 per cent, due to the combination of a less emissions-heavy production process and the carbon storage provided by trees.

The dome has been a staple of architecture for thousands of years. Made of contemporary materials, brick and mortar or wood primarily, domes have covered churches and stadiums around the world. …Currently, the Superior Dome, a domed stadium on the campus of Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan, is the largest wooden dome at 143 feet tall, a diameter of 536 feet, covering an area of 5.1 acres with a volume of 16,135,907 cubic feet. …For an example of a dome for education, look across the Atlantic to Europe and Sweden’s National Museum of Science and Technology in Stockholm. The Wisdome Stockholm building encompasses a wooden architectural design creating an arched-shaped room of 1,325 square meters (14,262 sq.ft). The Wisdome project is based upon a collaboration between Sweden’s five leading science centers… and incorporates the involvement of more than ten universities and research facilities.

Shelter is one of the most basic of human needs, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that we continually come up with new ways to build homes. Most building systems are open source to an extent, and the WikiHouse project tries to update the process for the internet age. WikiHouse is a modular building system similar to structural insulated panels (SIPs) but designed to be made on a CNC and insulated in the shop before heading to the site. Using this system, you can get the advantages of a manufactured home, but in a more distributed manner. Plywood or oriented strand board (OSB) can be used to make up the chassis of the blocks which can then be assembled very quickly on site versus traditional wooden construction. One of the more interesting aspects of WikiHouse is that it takes design for disassembly seriously. 

AUSTRIA — Lenzing is addressing the fashion industry’s reliance on fossil-fuel based synthetics. The Tencel lyocell manufacturer unveiled a new process that allows the wood-based fiber to create fabrics with stretch and recovery properties. The fossil-free process involves re-engineering woven fabric composed of Tencel fiber and a fabric pre-treatment, while maintaining the its closed-loop production and traceability. During the wet process, Tencel fibers undergo significant swelling in diameter, leading to increased yarn crimps in the widthwise direction. This translates into a fabric that can stretch with enhanced recovery and does not shrink or wrinkle easily, maintaining a smooth appearance even after home laundering, the company stated. …Fiber producers are growing their portfolio of fossil-fuel alternative fibers. …Lenzing said it is working with mill partners to develop stretch fabrics that meet the international standard for fabric stretch and recovery properties. 

Fiction Factory’s Wikkelhouse

The world faces an increasing shortage of housing and an escalating climate emergency. These urgent global issues call for quick action and innovative solutions. The numbers show us how stark things are. Construction activities and building operations produce more than 40% of the carbon emissions driving global warming. …The controlled factory-based environment of prefab construction makes it more efficient. This includes integrated reclamation and recycling of construction waste. This approach is highly cost-effective. It’s about being resource-savvy and reducing waste to the bare minimum. …Among many possible construction materials, wood or timber is among the most preferred for prefab modular buildings. Timber is renewable and an efficient carbon sink. The timber in buildings locks away the CO₂ the trees absorbed from the atmosphere when they were growing.

Cologne, Germany — Every year, pruning olive trees creates 7 million tons of waste. Ford engineers in Cologne launched an innovative research project to explore how that waste could be re-purposed to create auto part prototypes. They found the parts to be durable, and believe research like this could enable lighter weight parts that reduce plastic used and carbon footprint in vehicle parts and using more recycled and renewable content in its vehicles.  The trial was conducted as part of the COMPOlive project designed to demonstrate the impact of using materials made from recycled and renewable materials in auto parts. For the trial, the waste materials were sourced from olive groves in Andalusia, Spain. 

NORTH LONDON, UK — The Arbour, the station’s new eastern entrance, provides a gateway into Brent Cross Town, an £8 billion ‘net zero neighbourhood’, delivered in a partnership between Related Argent and Barnet Council. The new station sits on the Thameslink route between Cricklewood and Hendon stations, linking this area of north London to St Pancras International… It has a lofty timber canopy that covers a multi-level arrival sequence, reflecting the new town’s focus on wellbeing and nature by combining function with a planted public space. The 150m3 glulam timber frame has been designed to sit between and connect to two future office buildings, and aims to minimise the building’s carbon footprint. …Biophilia is part of the green arrival experience with hanging planters cascading down from the canopy, giving the sense that the landscape is being drawn up through the building.