Sara Kulturhus by White Arkitekter, one of Sweden’s tallest and most durable wooden skyscrapers
With a height of 75 meters, it is not only the second tallest building in the world built entirely of wood, but it was designed to have zero emissions thanks to a mixed system of solar panels, batteries and heat pumps connected to the city’s electricity and water supply network that can also provide energy to the surrounding neighborhood through a control of energy flows managed with artificial intelligence by ABB. It was Lidman himself who wanted a place that would be a sustainable building throughout its life cycle, “a passive house for an active culture that uses local construction techniques and materials, built by local labor.”
The wood with which it is completely built (no concrete use at all) comes from controlled forests in the region and was processed in Bygdsiljum, about 60 km from Skellefteå, in the form of glulam and cross glulam (also known as CLT or X-LAM). “First you had the race to the moon, then the race to the tallest building, and now the race to the world’s most sustainable building – it is perhaps one of the few races that goes in the right direction,” explained Oskar Norelius, the architect who led the project with Robert Schmitz . “The amount of carbon dioxide trapped in that wood corresponds to about 13,500 flights between Stockholm and New York.”