Sweden’s Sara Kulturhus ushers in New Era of “Plyscrapers”
After water, the second most used substance on the planet is concrete. It’s true. Concrete is the backbone of international infrastructure – buildings, motorways, sidewalks, bridges, dams, sports arenas, they are all made of concrete.
On a broad scale, this will not change any time soon. In 2050, the production of cement, the main ingredient in concrete, is expected to increase by two billion tonnes per year, which is unfortunate. Although cement is cheap, widely available and extremely strong, it also puts a huge strain on the environment. Cement constitutes 5% of carbon dioxide emissions; Heating a ton of cement in an oven happens to emit a ton of CO2 into the atmosphere. As a diagram from The guard pointed out two years ago, if concrete was a country it would be the third largest carbon dioxide emitter Worldwide.
This is why some cities increasingly want to move from the material and move back to several societies left in the 19th century: wood. There are a growing number of “plush scrapers” or multi-storey buildings built of cross-laminated wood. Check out the list at the tallest wooden buildings in the world – The majority were built in the last decade, and there are proposals for dozens more (in places like Tokyo, Portland and Helsinki) over the next 15 years, with some with 70 or more floors.
A place that paves the way for this trend is SkellefteĆ„, a city with about 75,000 inhabitants in northeastern Sweden, which recently opened Sara Kulturhus, a culture house with theater, museum, art gallery, public library and hotel. as reported by The guard. The 20-story building is largely made of treated wood (a combination of glulam and cross-laminated wood), which “is light but as strong as concrete and steel.”
That timber comes from local forests – where developers make sure to plant additional trees for each one they cut down – and not only saves the environment from the carbon that a concrete project would have emitted. The building can actually Store coal, amounting to 9,000 tonnes. Not to mention, building with wood is a faster and easier process. Truck deliveries to the site decreased by an estimated 90%, and a year of work was saved because the workers could assemble the prefabricated panels at a rate of one floor every other day.
We have long accepted that construction sites are noisy, dusty, polluted places where the quality of life is low. But that does not have to be the case when you build with wood. As one contractor told me The guard, “The people who build this would never go back to steel and concrete.” And for those who are worried about how the wood reacts to fire or moisture, do not worry. Today’s cross – laminated wood is prepared to protect against the wood’s old enemies.
To be fair, the complex is not built only from wood. There is a massive weight-bearing steel truss, and the top two floors contain some concrete to strengthen the building against the area’s subarctic winds. This is a general reality for plush scrapers: with the exception of future architectural advances, there is a built-in height limit.
But maybe that’s good. As cities begin to rethink empty plots and spread, it may be time to replace these unimaginative 40-story office floor tiles to collect places that actually enrich the environment – places that communities will be drawn to and proud of. Click through pictures of Sara Kulturhus here. The wood not only has a positive effect on the planet, it is also soft and gentle on the eyes.
As always with Scandinavian triumphs, there can be a natural tendency to roll your eyes. As in: Yes, beautiful, but it would never happen here. After all, SkellefteƄ is also a 100% renewable energy city, which is powered by hydropower and wind. But these are achievable goals that the United States can (and needs to) start pressing against. When beautiful wooden wonders await on the other side, it can be a little easier to get everyone on board.
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