Category Archives: Wood, Paper & Green Building

TOKYO – The organisers of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics have vehemently denied an accusation by an environmental group that several of the new Games venues are being built by wood that has been purportedly obtained through illegal logging. The US-based Rainforest Action Network (RAN) said on Monday that the use of wood from Malaysia and Indonesia to build new Games venues “flies in the face” of Tokyo’s commitment to realise the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. … This is due to the “illegal logging, human rights abuses, and high deforestation rates that have been widely documented in both the Malaysian and Indonesian forestry sectors and given what is known of Tokyo 2020’s plywood suppliers”. But Tokyo 2020 spokesman Masa Takaya told The Straits Times: “It is a matter of fact that all timber currently used in construction for the Tokyo 2020 Games has complied with its sustainable sourcing code for timber.”

Once fuel oils, industrial solvents, and other organic liquids enter a body of water, they are difficult to remove. The materials commonly used … are not always mechanically robust or environmentally friendly. Now Xiaoqing Wang and colleagues at the Research Institute of Wood Industry in Beijing have developed a relatively simple treatment process that turns balsa wood into a mechanically robust sponge that can selectively remove organics from water. Natural wood lacks the compressibility and absorbency usually associated with sponges. To give the balsa wood those properties, the researchers removed two of its primary cell-wall components, lignin and hemicellulose, by using aqueous chemical treatments. That changed the wood’s cell structure from a rigid honeycomb to a compressible, lamellar morphology. Even after 100 compressions, the sponge sprang back to its initial size, which indicated that it kept its mechanical robustness despite the removed material.

The Macquarie University Incubator project designed by Architectus and constructed by Lipman features timber by Australian Sustainable Hardwoods Australia. Iron Ash by Australian Sustainable Hardwoods was specified for the award-winning prefabricated timber structure built to embody the vibrant ethos of Macquarie University. …A key objective of the prefabricated structure was to enable future dismantling, relocation and reassembly. Though it wasn’t an easy project, the building was erected in just 37 days and the entire project completed within six months. The structure was built using prefabricated timber floor cassettes, supported on screw piles. Iron Ash treated Masslam V-columns support 22 roof glulam and CLT (cross-laminated timber) cassettes, exposing the timber both internally and externally. The building also contains 44 prefabricated facade panels incorporating 118 timber windows.

TOKYO — Attention Simone Biles: They’re building a venue in Tokyo where you can add to the four Olympic gold medals you won in Rio de Janeiro. The 2020 Olympic gymnastics venue is halfway completed and should be finished by this time next year. On Wednesday, engineers raised a massive timber roof section, one of five curved sections that will top out the 20.5 billion yen ($180 million) building, which designers describe as being shaped like a wooden bowl. “Japan’s wood culture will be communicated through the venue,” architect Hidemichi Takahashi said through an interpreter. Wood has been traditionally used in Japanese housing, and religious shrines and temples. Each of the five wooden sections weighs 200 metric tons, or 200,000 kilograms (440,000 pounds). Officials said the wood used in the roof is larch, a conifer in the pine family.

Used and unwanted clothes could be turned into water and fire resistant building material instead of being sent to landfill, researchers say. Experts are experimenting with fabric waste and turning it into solid material in the hope that it will be used in construction. The panels proved to be durable, as well as water and flame resistant, properties which could be fine tuned depending on the fibres used in their manufacture. The recycling scheme aims to reduce the millions of unwanted garments that are thrown out after only an average of two years use. …The group is the first to turn clothes into building material but researchers are trialling recycling them into soft mats for use as heat and noise insulators inside flooring and walls.

Architecture studio OOPEAA has completed a wood-framed apartment complex in jyväskylä, a city in central finland. The development, titled ‘puukuokka’, comprises three multi-storey structures. …In order to provide environmentally responsible and high-quality affordable housing, OOPEAA explored the potential of modular prefabricated cross-laminated timber (CLT) construction. consequently, the entire load bearing structure and frame of the three buildings is made of wood. …The use of CLT modules, which were prefabricated in a local factory, made it possible to cut the construction time on site down to just six months per building, thus reducing exposure to Finland’s winter weather conditions.

News from Italy this past week was devastating. …winds reaching 200 kilometers per hour felled more than 300,000 trees in the Val di Fiemme, the world-renowned Violin Forest. A heritage site, the forest protected resonance firs, the prized raw materials for tone wood. …With the tone wood supply severely depleted, the question as to how instrument makers and instrumentalists will react is a pressing one. Will we become more open-minded toward instruments made from composite materials? …Archetiers, better known as bow makers have experimented with composite materials ranging from carbon fiber to graphite for decades. …A little over two decades ago, Strad Magazine (London) commissioned me to set forth and report on a new generation of composite bow makers. Two proponents of the cause with very contrasting backgrounds, the Frenchman Benoît Rolland and the New Zealander Michael Duff were chosen from the growing field of composite specialists.

By: Anthony Thistleton 100 Projects UK CLT co-author
Wood is a building material that can last for centuries. It doesn’t rust, corrode or spall, and it complies with all expected building code and performance requirements. Wood design can add dimensional stability, immense strength and a low carbon footprint. It’s also beautiful, cost-competitive, strong and versatile, providing endless possibilities to design and build structures that leave a legacy. Now more than ever, with innovations like CLT, wood is capturing the imaginations of today’s leading building designers. The UK in particular has been a global pioneer of CLT construction with more than 500 completed projects to date. To celebrate the innovation and showcase what’s possible with CLT, we’ve compiled a book, 100 Projects UK CLT, from research commissioned by the Softwood Lumber Board (SLB) and Forestry Innovation Investment (FII).

Macquarie University Incubator by Architectus receives Educational Architecture: National Award. Australian Institute of Architects. The Macquarie University Incubator is conceived as a pair of pavilions, each with flexible layouts that lend themselves to the future adaptations and functions of startups. [The result is] a beautifully crafted timber building with a series of spaces that are warm and filled with light. This is a careful exercise in the design and engineering of timber structures, with diaphragms of cross-laminated timber, large-span laminated veneer lumber beams and glulam V columns as well as spotted gum hardwood and cork for the interior floor surfaces, and plywood for the external walls. …This project represents a new and sustainable engineered timber prototype for portable educational buildings.

Wood is seen as a source of sustainable life. In Sweden, “Paper Province” is preparing for the transition from a fossil fuel-dependent economy to another one, one that is plastic-free and eco-friendly. How? By using the raw materials of the Swedish forests to make innovative everyday objects with a very low carbon footprint. This is the ultimate goal of this industrial cluster, supported by the EU Cohesion Fund. …Paper Province is made up of 104 companies, researchers and academics. Its overall budget is 9.1 million euros. More than a third is financed by the EU Cohesion Fund. The sectors targeted are packaging, energy, or sport. Most of the materials that are manufactured and tested have not yet reached the general public. …”In Sweden we are cutting less than the annual growth, so we are actually building more capital in the forest,” says the Project Manager of “The Wood Region”, Thomas Bajer.

Australian biotechnology company Nanollose says it has successfully created its first test-garment made from Nullarbor fibre, a sustainable alternative to rayon and cotton. Nanollose says the move marks a “drastic departure from clothing made from traditional rayon fibre that comes from environmentally challenging wood pulp processing” and that is now able to offer a “commercially viable, eco-friendly manufacturing solution for the clothing industry”. …Nanollose’s alternative to to wood uses microbe-based fermentation to convert biomass waste products from the beer, wine and liquid food industries into microbial cellulose.

The story of the Hastings Pier is an improbable one. Located in Hastings – a stone’s throw away from the battlefield that defined English history – the pier was first opened to the promenading public in 1872. For decades the structure, an exuberant array of Victorian-era decoration, entertained seaside crowds but by the new millennium had fallen out of disrepair. In 2008 the pier was closed – two years later, it burnt down. When London practice dRMM won the competition to reimagine the structure, they took it as an opportunity to not just relive the glory days but work with the public to make a “pier for the people.” Their careful efforts won them the 2017 Stirling Prize and marked a landmark moment in regenerative architecture. …The cross-laminated timber structure is clad in reclaimed decking and surrounded by reclaimed deck furniture (designed in an inventive collaboration by dRRM and Hastings & Bexhill Wood Recycling.)