Category Archives: Wood, Paper & Green Building

How sustainable is the furniture in our homes, the paper we use, the wood we burn, or the timber that goes into building structures? These questions are being asked, more than ever, amid growing alarm over deforestation and the impact of climate change. …The 23-25 November meeting was part of the Sustainable Wood for a Sustainable World Initiative, which was formed in 2018 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN and various partners to reconcile the international demand for wood with social, economic and environmental needs. Meeting participants explored ways in which wood value chains, from harvest to consumption,  can be improved to support achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and how South-South Cooperation between countries could advance the process.

Using engineered timber instead of concrete and steel on commercial buildings may not be a lot more expensive, big construction firm Naylor Love says. New Zealand’s largest private construction firm with 700 staff and $600 million turnover, Naylor Love has developed a calculator that quantifies the amount of carbon in building structures using different materials. The calculator is based on a report commissioned by Naylor Love and authored by sustainability experts thinkstep-anz. The research project modelled a typical six-storey commercial building constructed two ways – engineered timber versus conventional concrete and steel. The engineered timber model reduced carbon emissions by up to 90 percent, Naylor Love said. …”The net total cost difference for an engineered timber structure can be as low as a few percent of the total building cost. For this, you can achieve about a 90 percent reduction in carbon emissions.”

When Timothée Boitouzet studied architecture in Japan… he realised the next smart material might be one that humans have used for thousands of years—wood. …In 2016, Boitouzet founded material science company Woodooin Paris, France, which retrofits timber to give it new properties. …Wood, however, can be used for more than support pillars. By selectively extracting wood’s lignin and replacing it with a specific type of polymer, it becomes a new material. This wood is weather-proof, more fire resistant, three to five times stronger, and transparent,” Boitouzet said …So far, automotive companies are the ones that have shown the most interest in his augmented wood. Currently, through a project called Woodoo Augmented Wood, the company is working on integrating electronics into its touch-sensitive wood. The material, which transmits light, will become wooden panels for ‘tactile dashboards’ in cars, Boitouzet says.

STAVANGER, NORWAY — It is not the first time a new city has blown me away. Nor the first time a building has blown me away. But it’s the first time I can recall both happening on the same day. Welcome to Stavanger, Norway’s fourth biggest city, and in a moment let me take you on a tour of a remarkable new construction here. …Stavanger is the Aberdeen of Norway. …”Welcome to the biggest wooden building in Europe,” said Haugland as we pulled up outside. Virtually all of the construction materials above ground level are wood, and so are the floors, ceilings and stairways which link the seven floors. …I was so awestruck by the whole thing that I snapped away on my iPhone and sent the pictures to the only architect I know. 

Milan-based studio, Peter Pichler Architecture, has unveiled images of their latest project designed for a tree-covered site close to the austrian town of Kitzbühel. Aptly titled ‘tree suites‘, the proposal is envisioned to form part of a new 7-star hotel development. The timber structures, which rise amid the forest, intend to connect guests with nature and provide a unique experience, similarly to the studio’s previous sustainable treehouse projects conceived for sites in Italy and the US. …In their contemporary interpretation of vernacular buildings, the architects have applied a wooden exoskeleton that wraps around the entire building. This structure is composed of two layers: a diagrid structure and a second layer made of intersecting timber sticks to filter the light and afford privacy. …The application of wood works twofold, firstly to reflect a local and sustainable material and secondly, to provide a warm, cozy feeling within the spaces.

UNIDO, with the public sector, has granted hi-tech machinery for the production of bamboo boards from within Sri Lanka for the first time. The first such hi-tech machinery series used for the production of bamboo boards to be set up in Sri Lanka greatly enhances creation of glue-laminated timber boards based on local bamboo supplies. The latest breakthrough is a part of “Bamboo Processing Sri Lanka” -a project launched by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)… The objective of this project is to develop a bamboo supply chain and product industry in Sri Lanka. Bamboo is an exceptionally fast-growing and resilient plant. Producing laminated boards from bamboo will reduce logging pressure on existing forests and therefore protect the environment. …Industrial Development Board of Ceylon is to establish a national bamboo training center and will promote the utilization of bamboo as a substitute for wood while tackling deforestation and creating innovative and sustainable products.

It seems that you can build just about anything out of wood. While researching the carbon footprint of steel production for a lecture recently, I came across the line “it takes 200 tons of steel to make a wind turbine” – a justification for steel being green. …To which Swedish company Modvion says, Oh yeah? We can build a wind turbine tower out of wood. There are actually many advantages to this. Not only does it avoid the carbon footprint of making all that steel, but because it is transported in sections rather than as complete tubes, it is not limited in diameter for transport like steel tubes are. …Because wood is lighter than steel, they can lift bigger sections. “Conventional steel tower constructions get dramatically more expensive with height due to the increasing need for thicker walls.”

Many common construction materials have a huge negative impact on the environment.  …That’s why more and more architects are choosing to work with sustainably grown and harvested wood, even for tall buildings. …Recent advancements in manufacturing and engineering have produced mass timber that performs just as well (or better) than steel or concrete, and successful fire tests have alleviated concerns about combustibility. In response, many cities around the world are changing their building codes to allow for super tall timber buildings. …For “The Farmhouse,” Studio Precht developed a modular system “that investigates the connection of people with their food and creates a building that connects architecture with agriculture.” …The prefabricated A-frame housing modules that form the core of the design combine living spaces with farming so residents can grow food for their own personal use, or to share with neighbors and the community. 

A team from KTH Royal Institute of Technology reports that it created the new composite material by combining wood cellulose nano fibrils (CNF) – or extremely small filaments known as nanorods—with MXene, a two-dimensional nanoscale conductive material. The wood fibrils provide mechanical strength otherwise lacking in MXenes, and they allow the electrodes to become flexible. “Our results will eventually help with realizing the development of flexible multifunctional energy storage devices, that is, supercapacitors and batteries, at a lower cost and with higher device-base performance,” says Max Hamedi, a researcher in wood cellulose at KTH who in recent years also developed a soft battery made of aerogel foam from wood pulp.

A few years ago we asked Why in the world would anyone want a wooden nail? It was about the Lignoloc from Beck Fastener. It was a special nail gun that drove compressed beech nails into wood where they bonded with the softer wood.  …a major problem with recycling wood is the nails. Wood nails are not as hard as steel, but they really bond well with the wood. They don’t rust or stain siding; you can barely see them. They do not act as thermal bridges (the heat transfer through metal nails can add up). The special design of the LignoLoc® nail tip and the large amount of heat generated by friction when the nail is driven in cause the lignin of the wooden nail to weld with the surrounding wood to form a substance-to-substance bond. …Beck has a new version … called an Automated Nailing Head. The possibilities of this are even more exciting.

LONDON, UK — The winners of the annual Wood Awards were announced at a ceremony held on the 19 November at Carpenters’ Hall in London hosted by Priya Khanchandani, editor of Icon magazine. …The judges selected Cork House as this year’s Gold Award and Private category winner. …The Commercial & Leisure winner is Royal Opera House ‘Open Up’. …The Interiors winner is Battersea Arts Centre. …MultiPly, this year’s Small Project winner, is the is the first structure made from UK manufactured CLT. …This year’s Structural Award winner is House in a Garden, chosen from all the shortlisted buildings. …The Furniture & Product judges selected two winners within the Bespoke category.

The team behind Ali-deck, the quick-fit, non-combustible aluminium decking system, will be showcasing their ground-breaking solution at this year’s London Build Expo. …London Build is one of the country’s leading construction and design shows. Attended by over 25,000 industry professionals, the event brings together over 350 exhibitors and more than 500 speakers from across the industry. The Ali-deck team will be presenting their full range of non-combustible decking systems. Mark Wood, Founder of Ali-deck comments: “Since bringing Ali-deck to market earlier this year, we’ve seen incredible demand for the range across both trade and commercial sectors. …the biggest market has been as a safe and effective replacement for composite decking in high-rise balconies, rooftops and other commercial settings. As the industry and central government aims to raise standards post-Grenfell, solutions like Ali-deck will continue to play a vital role.

SAS is now launching a new packaging of the award-winning New Nordic by SAS food concept. The new design of the cube will save up to 51 tons of plastics per year. This is one of many important steps toward reaching SAS goal of having 100 percent sustainable materials in the customer offering no later than 2030. …New Nordic by SAS has had a sustainability focus since it was launched in 2017. The packaging will now be re-launched as of November 21st with a new design and more sustainable materials. …Some form of plastic is often necessary due to food safety requirements. Therefore, the suppliers of SAS have come up with a solution that replaces the inside plastic container of the cube with a paper one. It is made of FSC* approved paper with a plastic coating, made from organic plant-based plastic instead of oil-based plastic.

Budapest-based design studio Hello Wood has unveiled a collection of outdoor smart furniture designed for schools and universities. The furniture is outfitted with solar panels to generate clean energy for charging USB ports. The sleek designs include extra-long, undulating lounge chairs and a funky “fluid cube,” all made out of solid wood. …Already installed in four Hungarian educational institutions, the …outdoor furniture collection includes two vastly different designs. One is a long lounge chair/bench that stretches out in a zig-zag shape with large curvatures marking the seating areas. The second design is what the designers call a “fluid cube.” The wooden cube is open on three sides, with a built-in bench on the interior. In addition to their unique shapes, the furniture pieces are also sustainable. The wood used in Hello Wood’s latest installation is all certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which guarantees that the timber comes from responsibly managed forests. 

NEW ZEALAND ….The passing of the Zero Carbon Act is a monumental step for us to achieve our commitments under the Paris agreement and show leadership globally by legally committing to net zero carbon by 2050. …A big focus currently is reducing the ‘embodied emissions’ of our built environment. …Let’s be clear, materials like steel contribute a large chunk of a building’s embodied emissions. So, are these materials going to impede our journey to zero-carbon… or are they part of the solution? Firstly, the Climate Change Commission’s first two five-year emissions budgets will focus on reducing operational emissions. …This will also give high-energy, high-carbon emitting industries like steelmaking, the time horizon to significantly improve. …Steelmaking in New Zealand contributes to just 2.2% of our total carbon emissions. …Legislation that focuses only on one part of a product’s life cycle may have the unintended consequence.

Wood is a natural material that is lightweight and sustainable, with excellent physical properties, which make it an excellent choice for constructing a wide range of products with high quality requirements – for example for musical instruments and sports equipment. Unfortunately, as most natural products, wood has a very uneven material structure that extends over several length scales. Therefore, large safety margins are often required during processing, which limit the efficiency of material utilisation. With the help of science, this drawback could soon be resolved. A key technology for this is artificial intelligence. Neuronal networks sort out flood of data—Mark Schubert works in the research department “Cellulose & Wood Materials” at Empa. In recent years, he has worked intensively on machine learning, with the goal of optimizing the functionality of wood. Schubert and his team would now like to apply this experience to other areas of wood processing. 

At nearly 70,000 square feet, Gillies Hall at Monash University in Australia has become the country’s largest Passive House-certified building. The school has a population of about 4,000 students. …Since the building was opened, modeling has maintained indoor temperatures between 22 °C  and 24 °C throughout the year. At the forefront of the project was the usage of cross-laminated timber, which inspired much of the design for the building’s interior. CLT is both lightweight and strong and is widely considered to have a low environmental impact in construction projects. Aside from providing superior thermal insulation, its simple and quick installation generates minimal waste onsite. …In Australia, Passive House-certified projects typically cost 6 to 10 percent extra to construct but use about 70 percent less energy than conventional buildings.

Lenzing reinforces its industrial capability. The Austrian group has just begun to build the world’s largest lyocell fiber plant in Thailand, which was already announced last summer. The factory will be located in the town of Prachinburi, near Bangkok. For the new plant, the company has partnered with Wood PLC group. The new plant will have a capacity of 100,000 tons per year and the investment volume for a first production line amounts to 400 million euros. …Lyocell is a type of synthetic fiber that is created from cellulose, usually eucalyptus. The material is completely biodegradable and dissolves in an organic, non-chemical solvent, which is reused throughout the process. The fiber is marketed under the Tencel brand, owned by Lenzing.