Into the woods
Skanska
The client:
Skanska is one of the world’s largest development and construction companies operating across the Nordics, Europe and the United States.
The task:
On November 24th 2022, leaders from the European Commission and the governments of Finland, Sweden and Estonia gathered to discuss how forests can provide inspiration and material for sustainable construction. They were joined by industry leaders that included Lena Hök, Skanska’s Executive Vice President of Sustainability & Innovation.
Patrick Gower covered the event on behalf of Skanska. The article was published on Skanska’s new Foresight Hub.
The role:
Content writing
You can read the full publication at skanska.com, or read a snippet below.
Timber currently constitutes just 3 percent of the total materials used in European construction, making it a niche practice.
The European Commission has much bigger ambitions.
“By keeping carbon inside wood, one day timber could turn our homes and even entire cities into carbon sinks,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said during an event on November 24, 2022. “We all know that building with timber could save up to 40 percent of carbon emissions compared to concrete. That’s a huge figure.”
Von der Leyen was speaking at the ‘Into the Woods’ New European Bauhaus event organized by the Government of Finland in collaboration with the European Commission and the governments of Estonia and Sweden. The gathering brought together leaders in government and industry to discuss how forests can provide inspiration and material for sustainable construction while fostering biodiversity and carbon sinks.
“We must find alternatives to emission-intensive materials in the construction sector,” said Sanna Marin, Prime Minister of Finland. “We have already taken many steps when it comes to energy efficiency, and we need to take steps towards material efficiency… we know that wood and bio-based materials can offer great opportunities for decarbonizing our building stock.”
Use of timber in construction may be small relative to more carbon-intensive materials, but it is growing rapidly.
The European market for cross-laminated timber – one of the most popular wood-based construction materials – reached a volume of 1.4 million cubic meters (nearly 50 million cubic feet) in 2021, according to market research group IMARC. That’s likely to hit 2.6 million cubic meters by 2027, a compound annual growth rate of 11.3 percent, the company estimates.
Timber’s sustainability credentials are a primary driver of growth, but it’s also cost-effective, flexible, aesthetically pleasing and can speed up the pace of construction. Mass timber requires less labor, equipment and tools on site. Instead, wood can be detailed, designed and prefabricated in an offsite shop, so when it’s delivered to the site, workers simply link the pieces together.
Skanska is carrying out an 860,000 square foot (80,000 square meter) modernization of Portland International Airport in the USA. To ensure sufficient capacity for future passenger demand, the project included the expansion of the terminal and implementation a new roof structure that utilized mass plywood panels, a new product.
The finished 9-acre (36,000 square meter) roof comprised of 80-inch (203 centimeter) curved glued-laminated timber – or glulam – beams that were pieced together onsite and lifted into position.