Category Archives: Wood, Paper & Green Building

The UK construction sector has made big improvements in the way it builds homes and the much-vaunted Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) are most definitely here to stay.  But we could be doing better. The city of Tokyo has the capacity to build more houses per year than the entire UK because Japan has been embracing MMC for 50 years. Timber as a construction material fell out of favour in the 20th century when steel and cement ruled the roost. But timber is sexy again, and we have the carbon-capture qualities of wood to thank for that.  According to trade organisation Wood for Good, each cubic metre of wood grown by a tree captures and holds 0.9 tonnes of CO₂. As context, the average household produces about 6 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year.

Kengo Kuma and Associates, the firm led by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, has designed a temporary pavilion for events and performances in Harumi, Tokyo. The semi-outdoor space was built using a steel frame infilled with panels made from cross-laminated timber.  These CLT panels measure 160 x 350 centimeters (63 x 138 inches) and are 21 cm (8 inches) thick. the result is a structure that appears to spiral upwards towards the sky. To prevent wind and rain from entering the pavilion, KKAA used transparent pieces made from TEFKA (a copolymer film made of ethylene and chloro-trifluoro-ethylene) to fill in the gaps between the panels. These kite-shaped elements allow light to enter the space, with the wooden panels filtering the light like trees in a forest.

LIGNA.21 goes into autumn, postponing its original event date from May to 27 September to 1 October 2021, said in a statement Deutsche Messe, the trade fair organizer. Following intensive reflections and discussions, and in view of the current developments in the global incidence of infections in the wake of the corona pandemic, Deutsche Messe and the German association VDMA have jointly decided to postpone LIGNA by around five months next year. …”The decision to postpone LIGNA was a very difficult one for us… it has been proven in practice that events in pandemic times can be held safely. At LIGNA, we have to take into account that entire machine parks are designed, assembled and presented in live operation with a long lead time and at great expense. …To ensure that LIGNA can live up to this expectation, suppliers and users alike must be given sufficient planning security for participation”, said Dr. Andreas Gruchow, Deutsche Messe Managing Board member. 

The global pandemic we are living through is highlighting just how quickly the human race can mobilise to get things done when faced with an immediate threat. …But Covid-19 isn’t the only challenge affecting the human race that requires such urgent intervention. …there will be environmental consequences if we don’t equally prioritise climate change. In construction and engineering, efforts to reduce carbon emissions will make a significant impact on helping to achieve net zero targets. …One key change should come from a broader acceptance that the reduction of embodied carbon in construction materials is as meaningful as reducing carbon in-use… A policy driven change in mindset would also mean that timber – still often overlooked in the UK because of misperceptions around its properties – would become increasingly important. …But the industry shift isn’t happening quickly enough. Currently the UK market for timber construction is still immature with too many misconceptions that are putting people off.

The Irish Timber Frame Manufacturers’ Association says that there has been an unprecedented and record increase in the price of timber in 2020, with this trend set to continue into 2021, adding substantially to the cost of house building in the year ahead. The construction industry has seen a substantial increase in the price of raw materials in 2020, and in particular in timber prices. While these costs are affecting all construction, they are impacting particularly hard on the timber frame industry… Fuelled mostly by an explosion in demand for timber in the US housing market … timber prices have risen steeply since the end of Q1 2020. …Most timber used in the timber frame industry is graded softwood imported from producers in Scandinavia and mainland Europe. These producers have started to export large quantities of timber to the US market. …the industry has now passed the point where it can continue to carry these price increases.

Once derided as tinderbox deathtraps, advances in wooden construction techniques have enabled tall timber towers to grow in cities throughout the world. Urban Agency’s Dock Mill proposal for Dublin is the latest to catch our attention and is slated for the roof of a 19th century industrial mill on the Irish capital’s waterfront. …  Dock Mill will consist of the original mill, which stands at 22 m in height, and the timber tower itself. This will be built on top of the mill’s roof and will be constructed from prefabricated CLT, extending the building upward a further 50 m. … The interior of the old mill will host residential apartments. … The tower’s interior will be mostly given over to office space, with the exception of the uppermost two floors, which will host a winter garden.

Packaging is often seen as bottom of the list of modern inventions that are kind to the planet. But thanks to a new initiative by Packhelp in collaboration with One Tree Planted, e-commerce businesses now have the opportunity to actually reforest the planet with their packaging orders. …Based on the quantity, size and type of their customer orders, Packhelp and One Tree Planted calculate how many trees are used for each order, then actually plant additional trees to more than offset the amount used. The tech-start up specialises in creating and ordering custom-branded packaging made from certified materials. …All of the company’s packaging is now certified with the Forest Stewardship Council’s FSC mark. 

Buildings around us create a whopping one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions — that is about ten times more than air traffic worldwide. In Europe alone about 190 million square metres of housing space are built each year, mainly in the cities, and the amount is growing quickly at the rate of nearly one percent a year. A recent study by researchers at Aalto University and the Finnish Environment Institute shows that shifting to wood as a building construction material would significantly reduce the environmental impact of building construction. The results show that if 80 percent of new residential buildings in Europe were made of wood, and wood were used in the structures, cladding, surfaces, and furnishings of houses, all together the buildings would store 55 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. That is equivalent to about 47 percent of the annual emissions of Europe’s cement industry.