A soft impression and minimum maintenance – these were two key requirements for the facade of the new building at the Oslo Cancer Cluster Innovation Park.“In the end, we chose heartwood pine panels, and the results were outstanding,” says project manager Stein Andre Vestskog of turnkey contractor Strøm Gundersen.
Situated in the far reaches of northeastern Norway, the small Arctic town of Vadsø
offers both beautiful scenery and a harsh climate. When Varanger Invest was planning
to convert a commercial property into an apartment building, durable materials were
the order of the day, as well as aesthetic considerations.
Fifty kilometres outside Stockholm, in the small town of Bålsta, something is happening that’s never been done before, and that nobody really knows how to do as yet. Not even Logicenters, which will be implementing the project. And yet the company is working on erecting the world’s first carbon-free logistics hall. A massive building, more than 20,000 square metres in area and made almost entirely of timber, which will produce no emissions at all during its life-cycle.
Prefabricated construction elements are nothing new, but the way in which they’re handled offers major potential for development. Lars Stehn, Professor of Construction Management and Building Technology at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Natural Resources Engineering at Luleå University of Technology, is researching this.
Two-thirds of forest owners’ income is derived from sawmills, and a competitive sawmill industry is in many ways the engine that drives the forestry sector. This is why SCA has invested close to one billion kronor in the development and efficiency of its sawmills in recent years with the aim of maximising the value generated from each tree all times.
Curtain wall is one of the most significant building principles in modern architecture. By separating the load-bearing structure from the facade, new possibilities were created for light, lightness, precision and industrialised construction. It is a technique with a long history and continued relevance for the facades of the future.
The requirements for sustainable construction influence many of the decisions made in a project. For Louise von Bahr, architect at Equator, this means working with solutions that both meet climate targets and create the right conditions for the architectural design.
A shared participation in a research project brought the architectural practice Equator and SCA together. It was there that a connection was established which would soon lay the foundation for the innovative facade system SCA Curtain Wall.
Reducing construction time by several weeks can result in significant savings in larger projects. With a prefabricated wooden facade system, the building can quickly be weatherproofed, and climate impact can be reduced by 60 per cent or more.
