Category Archives: Wood, Paper & Green Building

A German element manufacturer Brüninghoff favoured prefabricated wooden wall elements made of Kerto®LVL for its new concrete element plant. Due to the high level of prefabrication, assembly times were optimised. At the same time the material is impressively sustainable and material-efficient, fitting in with the overall concept of the new plant. The modern concrete element plant in Heiden Germany has an area of around 17,000 square metres. Metsä Wood’s Kerto LVL L-panels and Kerto LVL T-studs have been used for the prefabricated non-load-bearing wall elements. “The Brüninghoff Group makes prefabricated wooden elements with a particular focus on products with a very high proportion of wood products – such as laminated veneer lumber. To this end, we carefully select partners that fit our sustainability strategy and who are reliable. In this context, we chose wall elements made of Kerto LVL from Metsä Wood for our new concrete element plant,” explains André Leipold, Brüninghoff Holz GmbH & Co.KG.

Wood is a versatile material, be it the Rapana Street Library made out of 240 pieces of wood to the world’s longest parametric plywood wall framework at the Istanbul Airport to building an entire wooden skyscraper in Canada; this material has proven to be relevant, now more than ever. With the advent of climate change and an affinity towards acting on it, designers are actively opting for materials other than concrete. In this scenario, wood has come up to the rescue. The merit is up to the point that designers and developers see wood as the next mass construction material that goes by the changing climatic situation. Many countries are adapting this material to reach their environmentally conscious goals by reducing their carbon footprint. Moreover, in the advent of a technological era, wooden construction has blended with parametric design and computational methods. These have enhanced the versatility of modern wood constructions over traditional wooden joints. 

The Black and White is an office building in London’s Shoreditch neighborhood that started construction this summer under the helm of architect Andrew Waugh. Upon completion in summer 2022, the building is slated to be the tallest engineered timber office building in London. While touring the wood construction, Waugh spoke to the Financial Times about the building’s unique scent: “It’ll change every season, depending on temperature and humidity. …The Black and White building’s structure is made from laminated veneer lumber, which is truly lovely (LVLy) stuff built up from much thinner layers of wood. The floor decking is CLT. …”LVL is one of the strongest, wood-based construction materials relative to its density. This allows us to design a significantly smaller cross-sections for beams and columns than softwood whilst maintaining a high-quality surface finish from sustainable, managed forests. …It has compressive strength like concrete with 66% less weight, and the column cross-sections are the same as they would be in concrete.

The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research published a study in the journal Nature Communications that claims building future cities from engineered wood products could prevent 106 billion tons of carbon dioxide from entering the Earth’s atmosphere by 2100. As the world’s population increases, more people will gravitate toward cities. Low rise wooden buildings of between 4 and 12 stories could provide shelter for all those people and locations for community businesses without the carbon emissions associated with making buildings out of concrete and steel. …Abhijeet Mishra, the paper’s lead author said, “More than half the world’s population currently lives in cities. This means more homes will be built with steel and concrete, most of which have a serious carbon footprint. But we have an alternative. We can house the new urban population in mid-rise buildings — that is four to 12 stories — made out of wood.”

A new partnership between the Government and Oji Fibre Solutions could boost the development of sustainable wood products, hydrogen and bio-fuels at the Kinleith Mill near Tokoroa, creating jobs and reducing emissions across the economy Forestry Minister Stuart Nash announced today. “In order to build a low-emissions, high-wage economy, we need to explore innovative and sustainable solutions across all sectors. In the wood processing sector, there is the opportunity to integrate bio-manufacturing, which means producing bio-energy and high value bio-chemicals through the development of an advanced bio-economy manufacturing cluster,” Stuart Nash said. “Oji Fibre Solutions is a world-leader in pulp, paper and packaging products, and the Kinleith Mill employs over 500 people in the South Waikato. This joint feasibility study is the perfect opportunity to think differently about the way we process wood in New Zealand, to tap into the bio-economy, and harness the valuable by-products of wood fibre.

The University of Munich in Germany is getting a new building for research and education in the field of sustainable chemistry. This upgrade will expand the Straubing science center. …Designed in an elongated, three-story style, the entire Nachhaltige Chemie building is elevated and sits on stilts that are three meters from the ground, or about 10 feet. This is a solution for the building’s location, as it sits within the flooding zone for the nearby Donau river and is nearly as big as the floodwall itself. The building’s facade was created with wood, glass and concrete. Most of these were sustainably sourced. …This is an example of sustainable construction and self-sustaining construction — the type of design that will pave the way for the future. 

There’s a ubiquitous crop that slurps up unsustainable quantities of water, gets doused in chemicals and fertilizers to maintain its growth—and yet doesn’t provide us with any food. This crop is cotton, and it covers 34.5 million hectares of arable farmland around the world. Now, a team of Swedish researchers propose that if we replace a share of this crop with fibers made from the wood of fast-growing poplar trees, we could free up millions of hectares of cotton land for growing food instead. They also explore how a new processing method could make use of the whole tree, extracting bio-oils for fuel from the remaining wood. To boot, poplar forests could help to draw down carbon as they grow, the researchers report in the journal Joule. …Fast-growing poplar trees are a good source of cellulose—and they don’t need cotton’s artificial inputs. 

AUSTRALIA — Handmade wooden objects often have an interesting backstory but rarely does it include the importation of more than 150 kilograms of methamphetamine by organised crime syndicates. In a rare move the Australian Federal Police (AFP) has donated timber logs that were used for just that purpose to woodworking clubs at Warragul and Moe, in Victoria’s Gippsland region. One club member Don Ferguson saw details of the drug bust in the news in 2016 and asked if the clubs could have the logs. It took a few years before the court process was complete and two truckloads of logs could be delivered to the woodshed at Warragul. …”It was identified as padouk, which is quite a valuable structural timber and it also has value for artistry work as well. It’s beautiful timber to work with, the grain in it is superb, and it polishes up beautifully,” club secretary Bob Amott said.

UNITED KINGDOM — The Wood Awards has announced the 2022 shortlist, revealing a stunning, innovative array of British architecture and product design using wood, all now in the running to receive the highest architecture and design accolade of the UK timber industry. From more than 200 projects entered, a shortlist of 32 entries has been created which unveils the diverse, creative, and high-quality buildings and furniture being made using the world’s only truly sustainable and renewable material – wood. Included in the list are some of UK’s leading architects, engineers, product designers and furniture makers, showcasing some of the exciting talent arising from the UK’s domestic timber industry and the wood suppliers who support them.

A recent analysis by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research suggested that housing a growing population in dwellings constructed of wood rather than standard steel and concrete might save more than 100 billion tons of CO2 emissions until 2100. …In addition to harvesting from natural forests, freshly created timber plantations are needed to supply building wood. …scientists warned that if not carefully controlled, biodiversity may suffer. The study is the first to examine the effects of a large-scale transition to wood cities on land use, emissions from land-use change, and long-term carbon storage in harvested forests. …The scientists examined four distinct land-use scenarios: one with typical building materials like cement and steel, three with additional timber demand and how the additional high demand for wooden building materials could be met, where it would come from, and what the implications might be in terms of direct and indirect carbon emissions from land usage.

In recent years, McDonald’s Taiwan, as a major player in the local food industry, has shown leadership and commitment to lowering carbon emissions and pursuing sustainable development goals. …McDonald’s has operated in Taiwan for nearly 40 years. It now has more than 400 business locations and employs over 20,000 people across the country. As the awareness and concern over sustainability in the food industry has grown, McDonald’s has been at the forefront of change and innovation, taking its corporate responsibilities seriously. McDonald’s was the first major corporation in the Asia-Pacific region to receive full certification from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) in 2017 for its sustainable paper packaging sourced from responsibly managed forests. Since 2018, McDonald’s has done away with the plastic caps for its popular McFlurry ice cream desserts. It also replaced the plastic spoons with wooden stirring utensils and began replacing plastic containers for salads and drink trays with paper products.