Nordic Waste Wood for Good

NORDIC WASTE WOOD FOR GOOD ALDNISH ROY ACDEMY NTU TO AL KTH

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CREDITS

AUTHORS Olga Popovic Larsen Project Leader Royal Danish Academy Xan Browne Project Coordinator Royal Danish Academy PROJECT PARTNERS Pasi Aalto Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) Berit Nilsen Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) Mark Hughes Aalto University Roberto Crocetti Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm (KTH) Alison Martin Weaver, Italy

PROJECT ASSISTANTS Thorbjørn Lønberg Petersen Royal Danish Academy Hector Grundtdal Grønborg Royal Danish Academy Ariel Lim Royal Danish Academy

ASSOCIATED SCHOOLS Royal Danish Academy, Institute of Architecture and technology https://kglakademi.dk/ KTH Royal Institute of Technology https://www.kth.se/en

Saara Kantele Aalto University

Norwegian University of Science and Technology https://www.ntnu.edu/

Jesper Vik NTNU

Aalto University https://www.aalto.fi/en

Fabian Meszaros Mykland NTNU

FONTS Futura PT Clear Sans

Vegard Forbergskog NTNU

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We are grateful for the support from the educational institutions, the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, and Aalto University in Espoo for their participation in the project and embedding the workshops into their respective curriculums.

The project was funded by the Nordic Culture Fund.

We are grateful for their generous support, which made this project possible.

PHOTOGRAPHY All photographs have been taken by students or staff at the associated schools, unless otherwise stated.

PUBLICATION Olga Popovic Larsen Chief editor Xan Browne Co-editor Hector Grundtdal Grønborg Editorial & Graphic design

© March 2022

Institut for bygningskunst og teknologi 2

CONTENTS

CONTEXT, CONTENT AND PURPOSE

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ROYAL DANISH ACADEMY WORKSHOP INTRODUCTION

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WASTE WOOD CASCADING

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ROYAL DANISH ACADEMY BUILDING GREEN WORKSHOP

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STRUCTURAL WASTE WOOD BEAMS

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BOURDIEU, CONSUMPTION & WASTE-WOOD-PANELS

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NTNU WORKSHOP INTRODUCTION

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TIMBER IN CONSTRUCTION

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FROM WASTE TO RESOURCE

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TO SEE THE FOREST FOR THE TREES

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AALTO UNIVERSITY WORKSHOP INTRODUCTION

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BAMBOO, A REMOTE PRACTICE

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FINAL THOUGHTS

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BIOGRAPHIES

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CONTEXT, CONTENT AND PURPOSE

By Olga Popovic Larsen Professor at the Royal Danish Academy

WHAT Nordic Waste Wood for Good set out to develop a new cultural exchange where specialists and students from a range of disciplines and backgrounds collaborate on a truly Nordic project related to architectural opportunities from waste wood. Through workshop participation they have taken part in developing new approaches to waste wood specific to the Nordic context, with a focus on architecture and cultural values.

WHERE Over about two years, the project took place in the four Nordic countries: Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland within each of the partner institutions. The results are not limited to physical existence, also shared via a real-time online discussion platform. Finally the edited material is shared via this book publication.

WHY Wood is an indigenous building material in the Nordic region with a rich cultural heritage, as well as playing an important role in working towards a carbon free future.

Waste wood is currently underutilised in the Nordic region and the timber specialists in this project

see its cultural value as being under explored and an important factor for architectural formgiving.

HOW The project ran as a series of workshops and exhibitions over 2 years. At each of the workshops, participants created 1200x1200mm panels using locally sourced waste wood. The process and results are documented extensively using photography and film and this edited publication is a result of the work produced.

CONTENT Nordic Waste Wood for Good is a project that links the architectural values of Nordic timber building culture with our contemporary timber material understanding, concentrating specifically on how we perceive material values beyond the commonly measured attributes. The main aim is to investigate how novel approaches rooted in the Nordic wood building culture can inform new strategies and create opportunities for building with waste wood. In this context waste wood should be understood as alnon-utilized wood with potential value, for instance off-cuts from industry and recovered wood from construction and demolition

Figure 1/ Waste Wood Canopy

processes. These are often regarded as waste due to being too short, the wrong shape, are in limited quantity or contain contaminants such as nails or screws.

The project explores the understanding of perceived value of waste wood from a cultural perspective. This is an important aspect as the world moves towards more resource efficient and circular futures. The cultural, aesthetic and societal aspects are underdeveloped in the current waste wood discourse, a direct result of a focus on purely technical assessments of the material, as seen when we

look at most of the scientific material available today. By utilising waste wood in more creative and resource optimised ways, Nordic Waste Wood for Good contributes to a more holistic understanding of resource use in relation to societal values.

This study presents how a more holistic approach to the re-use of building materials might provide pathways of extending carbon storage in wood materials. Not because of their technical capacity but because of the value given by society through ingenuity, introducing a mindset where ex-

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ploration, experimentation and an overarching will to re-use resources is cultivated. This is seemingly in opposition to the pre-defined and controlled pathways currently discussed in legislation, focusing on documentation, risk management and technical aspects of re-use - possibly preventing rather than promoting future innovation in an effort to control present challenges.

Nordic Waste Wood for Good’s way of achieving the project aims is through creative hands-on workshops to explore a new aesthetic language of opportunities, rooted in the Nordic wood culture. The workshops link traditional crafting methods with the most up-to-date digital tools for design and wood fabrication, seeking to bridge culture and technique. The workshop explorations have been envisaged to be context specific to the Nordic participants and to the site-specific waste wood availability- each partner institution hosting the workshops. To create a continuum across four different contexts each with different disciplines, the output for each workshop is a series of 1200x1200mm panels made from contextually available waste wood.

The richness of output with the new aesthetic language we believe, will link architectural values of Nordic timber building culture with our contemporary timber material understanding. The project seeks to promote a current day architecture that is respectful of both the

material and the building culture, celebrating sensory qualities, creating forms and details that are contemporary whilst preserving the memory of the material and context. The works’ theoretical grounding is in New Materialism and Phenomenology, that “open up the possibility to explore how each (material) affects the other, and how things other than humans (a tool, technology or a building) can be social ‘agents’. The focus is on the significance of matter, a theme explored within Phenomenology in architecture, looking at the relation between architectural qualities and the senses.

PURPOSE Wood is a unique building material that continues to be an important resource in the Nordic Region, and with careful attention, will play an important role in working towards a carbon free future. Usage is set to increase due to a surge of interest from politicians, policy makers, designers and the general public who reference its aesthetic and sensory characteristics as well as carbon storage, renewability and local availability. It is important to remember that timber originates from forests- home to 80% of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity- as well as playing a significant role in regulating our climate. This project responds by investigating smarter ways of utilising all the wood we have, including leftovers, industrial waste and second-hand wood.

In this we explore waste wood as a multi-generational material in

Figure 2/ Waste Wood Canopy close up

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Figure 3/ Typical opstacles in waste wood can be rot, mold, staining and as shown here; old wallpaper or paint.

In this context, the main purpose of the project is to create a more holistic understanding of the value of waste wood through exploring architectural, aesthetic and cultural aspects, while keeping in mind the technical aspects. It serves as a starting point for future collaborations towards a more complete understanding of resource use in society. This includes accomplishing the following goals I-V: I. Establish a robust starting point for Nordic collaboration within the project scope.

the physical sense, increasing the longevity of a piece of wood, thus giving a good material an extended life. This is a global opportunity for the Nordic Region to lead the way in exploration of innovative resource approaches.

We build on the existing cultural and technical knowledge, whilst addressing aspects that are lacking. This project investigates with a more holistic approach, where the two channels are explored simultaneously –bridging culture and technique. This is achieved by exploring design opportunities through both traditionally used crafting methods and combining them with current day digital tools, as well as investigating the cultural values of the material within the same project. We believe that this approach is essential as it combines aspects in ways that

are more meaningful, where the results are integrated within an environmental/technical and cultural context with an aim of creating a greater impact.

Wood is celebrated for its endurance as well as its diverse sensory qualities. As a material it carries a memory of what it has been before, how it grew in nature to how it has been altered by its environment- these being reflected by its aesthetic and other sensory qualities, becoming a part of the building element, furniture or object. Waste wood is often irregular with unusual dimensions, rather than shredding this diversity, this project explores approaches and solutions that embrace these qualities. This contributes to a more resource responsible approach to building design and architecture.

II. Combine architectural education, research and practice in exploring a catalogue of opportunities.

III. Understand and utilise the Nordicness in wood culture.

IV. Create a real-time public forum for waste wood value discourse, both between participants, related professions and general public.

V. Collect, analyse and understand the cultural significance and potential value of waste wood in architecture.

PROJECT AUTHORS Olga Popovic Larsen Project Leader Xan Browne Project Coordinator PROJECT PARTNERS Pasi Aalto Berit Nilsen Mark Hughes Roberto Crocetti Alison Martin PROJECT ASSISTANTS Thorbjørn Lønberg Petersen Hector Grønborg Ariel Lim Saara Kantele Jesper Vik Fabian Meszaros Mykland Vegard Forbergskog PUBLICATION Olga Popovic Larsen Chief editor Xan Browne Co-editor Hector Grønborg Editorial design For full credit list, see Credits page, p. 2

Funded by Nordisk Kulturfond

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WORKSHOPS AND PARTNER INSTITUTIONS NTNU, Trondheim

SEPTEMBER 2020

Workshop results are shared digitally in real time

AALTO, Espoo NOVEMBER 2021

KTH, Stockholm Project partners travel to other workshops to share their expertise

ROYAL DANISH ACADEMY, Copenhagen SEPTEMBER 2021 OCTOBER 2021

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ROYAL DANISH ACADEMY WORKSHOP INTRODUCTION 8th-9th of September, 2021

Students from four master programmes from the Institute of architecture and technology (IBT) took part in a two-day workshop in September 2021. Finding inspiration from textures and tectonics across different areas of Copenhagen, the students had a day and a half to make their concepts a reality. Working hands-on from the beginning, the available waste streams served as a parameter in defining what was possible. In between the making, three timber experts, Roberto Crocetti (timber

engineer), Magnus Wålinder (wood scientist), and Göran Pohl (timber architect) each gave their perspectives on timber reuse through a mini lecture series. Following this, groups developed their own niche, and designed unique panels, including modular systems, design for disassembly connections, natural treatments, and active facades.

The days culminated in presentations and further discussions on reuse and the circularity of timber.

STUDENTS Mathilde Egeberg Hvidtfeldt / Sheila Koyo Møller / Michelle Lu Yeng Sun / Lasse fragtrup / Birgit Fløystad / Sofie Hybholt / Joachim Malchow-Møller / Lui Fischer / Sune Lund Bunke / Trine Strøm Grebstad / Anna Kirstine Stauersbøl Laustsen / Philip Lütken / Julie Ejlers / Simone Greve Larsen / Thea Ringmann Madsen / Frederik Stanley With / Stinus Bertelsen / Gabriel Solheim / Sander Løkkegaard Benner / Benjamin Meulengracht / Chih Wei Chan / Emma Maya Buchanan / Ida Møller Rasmussen / Malene Grimsgaard Loe / Olai Aarseth / Cecilie Sarah Schack Kristensen / Alina Matveenko / Sebastian Seipelt / Amalie Mogensen / Jakob Schou Krogstrup / Mathilde Kerma Ekholm Wallevik / Doris Lau /Marius Trier Krogh / Frederik Janum Friis / Magda Kasprzak / Marte Jensen Birkeland / Line / Can Koray Taskin / Ceasar Samolov / Anna Taarneby / Christel Madsen / Hans Arge Poulsen / Laurits Genz / Jesper Lunde Rasmussen / Georgios Dimopoulos / Majse Marie Nørhald / Jacqueline Yan / Johannes Torrång / Thorstein Rasmussen / Klara Elmdahl / Doruk Kayali / Janne Klausen / Peter Bundgaard / Pernille Hammer / Laurids Bager / Dejle Zaradesht / Christoffer Røen / Siri Braide / Xinyi Li / Laura Skjønberg / Armina Avdic / Lauritz Wagn Møller / You Wei Yen / Jerry Petersen / Camila Martínez / Konrad Sonne / Jesper Kevin Jensen / Xiaoyu Luo / Jonas Bockhoff Clausen / Andrew Smith / Bo Andersen / Oskars Lapsa / Selma Sandbu / Rune Tharaldsen / Maya Campbell / Rasmus Bjørn / Sivert Frost Støren / Gustav Engedal / Haider Majeed / Line Bruus / Lukas Junkel / Alex Buckthal / Hang Zhang / Damo Qiao / Declan Ericksen / Kasper Biltoft-Jensen / Anton Mailänder / Shiuan Dai / Birgit Fløystad / Joachim Keller / Jakob Nielsen / Ulrika Nilsson / Ferdinand Aagenæs / Malin Wolter / Marie Barfod / Ida Lykke Christensen / Frederik Lauge Jørgensen / Bjørn / STAFF Xan Browne / Hector Grundtdal Grønborg / Thorbjørn Lønberg Petersen / Ariel Lim / Olga Popovic Larsen/ Göhran Pohl / Magnus Wålinder / Roberto Crocetti /

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Figure 7/ Close up in sunlight Figure 8/ Waste pine used for the ‘tiles’

A NATURAL PAINT

Figure 4/ Previous page: Waste wood panel from the Royal Danish Academy workshop Figure 5/ Panel made from pine and acetylated pine Figure 6/ Digital visualistation showing figure 5 in a larger scale

This group decided to unify their waste wood with paint. Their point of depature was a red wooden warehouse in Copen- hagen. The warehouse had dif- ferently sized boards, but the red colour tieed the different widths together and gave the material a collective feel.

DRAWING ON TRADITION The paint that the group used on the boards consisted of natural red pigments and a buttermilk glue. This type of glue, along with casein based glues have been used long before the invention of

plastic binders. The paint on the bottom boards were enforced with a plastic based glue, as the bottom would recieve most weathering.

This also created a dynamic between the two paints, as seen in figure 7.

The panel is a good example of how to balance biodegradable and non-biodegradable materials to maximize the qualities of both.

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Figure 9/ Previous page: Photo from the Copenhagen workshop Figure 10/ Panel made from pine offcuts

Figure 12/ Panel made from reclaimed floorboards

Figure 11/ Close up of figure 10

Figure 13/ Close up of figure 12

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Figure 17/ Close up of figure 15

THREADED WOOD This panel showcases an innova­tive method for joining many, smaller pieces of wood together.

Figure 14/ Previous page: Digital visualisation showing figure 12 in a larger scale Figure 15/ Panel made from pine offcuts

The small pine offcuts from Danish window production have been tied together using a natural string, creating a textile-like material.

At first glance the panel is like many of the others, a texture or structure, however this panel can move in both horizontal and vertical directions.

This means the panel can morph into doubly curved surfaces, or remain flat as it is pictured here. This flexibility lends itself to a number possible applications, such as partitions. The panel could also bend to form self-standing pat­terns that are mounted on supports at certain points for stability.

Alternatively, the panel could be bent outward and mounted on poles, to create adaptable shading on facades.

Figure 16/ Close up of figure 15

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Figure 18/ Page 14: Photo from the Copenhagen workshop Figure 19/ Previous page: Close up of figure 15 Figure 20/ Panel made from various offcuts.

Figure 22/ Panel made from reclaimed floorboards and acetylated wood

Figure 21/ Close up of figure 20

Figure 23/ Close up of figure 20

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Figure 24/ Previous page: Digital visualisation showing figure 22 in a larger scale Figure 25/ Panel made from reclaimed floorboards and acetylated wood

Figure 27/ Panel made from mixed offcuts

Figure 26/ Close up of figure 25

Figure 28/ Close up of figure 27

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Figure 31/ Close up of figure 29 Figure 32/ Close up of figure 29

PLUG AND PLAY Searching for inspiration around Copenhagen, this group came upon an old piece of wood, possibly a door. The group decid­ed to work with the idea of found or reclaimed wood and work to fill in the gaps and crevaces found in the door.

Figure 29/ Panel made from a reclaimed piece of wood and mixed offcuts.

Figure 30/ Close up of figure 29

ALL ABOUT OFFCUTS Following the idea of found mate­ rial, the group only used offcuts from other groups also in the work­shop. This resulted in a playful process where the group mem­ bers sat around the

fractured door and slowly came up with different shapes and structures based around what they had find. The process resulted in this expressive panel, that tells an interesting story of both the found door and the workshop offcuts. A process that also demonstrates a highly playful way of creating a facade.

This might not be easily scalable, however the process itself inspires a playful approach to creating a facade.

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Figure 33/ Panel made from mixed offcuts

Figure 35/ Panel made from reclaimed floorboards and acetylated wood

Figure 34/ Close up of figure 33

Figure 36/ Close uå of figure 35

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Figure 40-43/ Panel at various stages of opening

HOISTING “Any architect dreams of hoisting something in their lifetime.”

- Groupmember

Figure 37/ Previous page: Close up of figure 33 Figure 38/ Panel made from reclaimed floorboards.

Figure 39/ Close up of figure 39

This group was inspired by old warehouses with heavy wooden shutters and the way in which some fold onto themselves, rather than simply opening out.

What this allows for is a gradual opening process that also incrementally shades the opening. This application could work in spaces where direct sunlight can be an issue. As well as offering very in-

cremental adjustments to the light level. This could be in offices, artist workshops or other places where lighting requirements are particularly sensitive.

Furthermore, the incorporation of the shutter into the rest of the facade creates a seamless and coherent look both whilst open and closed. It makes the window feel incorporated rather than added to the facade.

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Figure 44/ Panel made from pine offcuts and reclaimed floorboards

Figure 46/ Panel, or insect hotel, made from various materials including accoya and reclaimed wood.

Figure 45/ Close up of figure 44

Figure 47/ Close up of figure 46

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Figure 50/ Close up of figure 48 Figure 51/ Close up of figure 48

SELF SUPPORTED

Figure 48/ Panel made from reclaimed pine floorboards.

Figure 49/ Close up of figure 48

Inspired by the corrugated structure of sheet pile walls, this group set out to create a self supported panel.

temporarily. With minor tweeks this structure could also be fastened at the ground, mak­ing it a fairly robust wall.

The panel consists of rows of joined cut up floorboards that then stack onto each other with no fastenings.

This panel does not shy away from the visual inconsistency of reclaimed floorboards. The group used white painted pieces to break up the pattern created by the struc­ture and in some places lined up the paint. In a sense, this curates the defect, showcasing it as an opportunity.

This makes it possible to dis­ assemble and reassemble the panel as a modular system.

Applications for this could be at festivals or other places where a selfsupported wall needs to stand

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Figure 52/ Previous page: Digital visualisation showing figure 48 in a larger scale Figure 53/ Photo from the Copenhagen workshop

Figure 54/ Photo from the Copenhagen workshop

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WASTE WOOD CASCADING

By Mark Hughes Professor at Aalto Uniservity & Saara Kantele Designer & Architect

At a time when humanity is consuming the Earth’s natural resources at an alarming rate, can we afford to think of any material as “waste” if it still retains some potential utility?

The answer surely must be an emphatic no! But how to change this paradigm, when our current economic system relies primarily on the linear throughput of materials to fuel continued, unsustainable, growth and when we regard materials and products that reach the end of their lives simply as trash? Despite the recognition that we should transition to a circular economy, progress towards circularity is painfully slow. This is highlighted by the fact that, globally, we are currently only 8.6% circular (Circle Economy 2020).

Of all the materials that we use, wood is, arguably, one of the least valued – perhaps because it is so ubiquitous, so commonplace, so familiar – yet there are compelling reasons for adopting circular thinking in our use of wood. It is now time to rethink our view of wood waste and to re-imagine what can be done with it.

Around half of all extracted materials are used in the construction of buildings (European Commission 2004) and almost 50% of waste generated in the EU is accounted for by construction and demolition activities (Eurostat 2018). In addition to the material resources consumed, and wastes generated, buildings and construction account for over a third of final energy use and almost 40% of carbon dioxide emissions (UN Environment and International Energy Agency 2017). Buildings and construction clearly have a huge impact, and urgent measures need to be taken.

As a building material, wood has excellent potential to reduce the climate impact of construction and it has been speculated that the widespread adoption of wood in the construction of mid-rise buildings, could be used to transform the building sector from a carbon source to a sink (Churkina et al 2020). Every ton of wood stores approximately 1.8 tons of sequestered atmospheric carbon dioxide, until it decomposes or is burned and, when substituting energy intensive, non-renewable, miner-

Figure 55/ Class A waste wood

al-based materials, in functionally equivalent roles, the emissions associated with their production are partly displaced (since the production of wood is generally less greenhouse gas emissions intensive) leading to additional substitutive benefits of around 1.2 kg carbon reduction in emissions per kg carbon wood used (Leskinen et al 2018). Although wood is the most abundant renewable building material known to humanity, increased demand for wood products might affect future biomass availability and result in reduced carbon dioxide sequestration by forests as well as biodiversity loss.

Jonsson et al (2021) have recently highlighted that the positive climate change mitigation benefits of wood construction could be offset by reduced carbon sinks in EU forests which could lead to knock-on effects beyond EU borders, if demand increases significantly. How then to maximize the supply of wood for building, within the limits of sustainable forest management?

One way is to increase the recirculation of wood through a cascade approach (Hughes 2019). In a cascade, wood is first reused in applications that are commensurate with the quality of the mate-

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rial, before being used in subsequent applications requiring lesser quality. Currently though, rather than cascading, most wood recovered from demolition is burned for energy and so all potential for material applications is lost. In a cascade, the aim is to maximise the utility of all quality “fractions” in material forms before recovering the energy content.

In 2019, global production of sawnwood and wood-based panels was approximately 840 million cubic metres (FAO, 2021) and whilst not all this material ends up in buildings, a sizable proportion will do. More detailed national studies have shown that, for example, in Austria the current stock of wood in residential buildings is approximately 32 Mm3 that is forecast to rise to over 50 Mm3 by 2100 (Kalcher et al 2017) and in Finland it has been established that around 17.5 million tons of wood are incorporated in the structures of residential houses (Nasiri et al 2021). Such studies show that there is an appreciable resource of secondary material that could be utilized in new applications.

Research also demonstrates that cascading can improve resource efficiency (Risse et al 2017) and that, through the reuse of wood products, the environmental burden of wood construction can be reduced (Niu et al 2021). Whilst wood use strategies yielding the best overall reduction in environmental impact and climate change mitigation impact will be dependent on local conditions, such as

local building practices, logistics, repurposing facilities, and infrastructure, cascading could add substantially to the eco-efficiency of buildings. So, why is cascading not more widespread?

Perhaps some of the more pressing reasons why cascading is not more widespread are that there is currently no large-scale market for recycled wood products, other than for energy, nor infrastructure to sort and process recovered wood. Other factors inhibiting wood cascading are concerns over the availability and quality of recovered wood. A recent study (Husgafvel et al 2018) concluded that in Finland the current prospects for wood cascading are limited, because of concerns about cost effectiveness, industrial scalability, and profitability, in addition to quality and material characteristics, such as cleanliness and dimensions. Concerns over quality and material characteristics can largely be traced back to the way wood is used in buildings and how they are subsequently demolished at end-of-life.

Currently, most demolitions are carried out using heavy mechanical equipment that results in significant damage to the wood material, reducing its dimensions and making it less suitable for reuse (Figure 1). Coupled with contamination in the form of wood treatments or coatings and combined with other materials, the quality of wood recovered from demolitions is generally lower than it might po-

Figure 56/ Wood at waste management site

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with future disassembly in mind has been the subject of several recent research projects, such as InFutUReWood.

Figure 57/ Wood at waste management site

tentially be, and as a result, even wood that could be reusable is generally chipped for burning with energy recovery. Despite this, even now the quality of wood recovered from demolished buildings is such that it could be cascaded in solid wood form (Sakaguchi et al 2017).

To increase the recoverability of wood from buildings at end-of-life, ideally, they would be dismantled rather than demolished. However, the additional costs involved currently makes this an unlikely proposition, since apart from a few niche applications, there is no established market for cas-

caded wood and so there is little incentive to recover wood material by dismantling. To increase the recovery of high-quality wood, we should adopt new ways of designing buildings for adaptation in use, as well as for deconstruction at end-of-life. This would involve a radical shift in building design and construction from the current linear model, in which buildings are generally demolished and virtually no material is recirculated, to a circular one, which retains the quality of the wood materials as much as possible for reuse.

The design of wooden buildings

How then do we establish widespread wood cascading? In the immediate future, a significant source of material will be the buildings already in existence, and the quality and dimensions of wood recovered from these will depend on whether they are dismantled or demolished. With the development of new wood products and wood structures that can incorporate recovered wood, we should find viable alternative ways of utilizing material that would otherwise be chipped and burned, thus creating new cascading markets. In the short-term we are, however, faced with a “chicken and egg” dilemma.

Without a market for the recovered material, how do we incentivize the dismantling of buildings rather than demolishing them, and without a reliable source of good quality material from dismantling how do we establish a market in the first place?

constellations of enterprises and other actors.

Perhaps most importantly of all, we need to change our perception of wood “waste” and start to consider it as a valuable resource.

In our recently completed “Re-imagining Wood Waste” course, held at Aalto University, perhaps one of the most striking outcomes of the students’ work was that viable uses could be found for all quality fractions of demolition wood, not only the better-quality material.

This gives us confidence that not only can we utilize so-called waste wood for a diversity of useful application, but that we can, and should, re-evaluate what we consider waste!

Policy and fiscal incentives will undoubtedly help establish such a market, whilst regulation and standards will be required for such second life wood products to promote consumer acceptance. To establish cascading at scale, we perhaps need to create new ecosystems of stakeholders, ecosystems that currently do not exist.

This could be achieved through the establishment of demonstrator projects that bring together new

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REFERENCES FOR: WASTE WOOD CASCADING Churkina, G., Organschi, A., Reyer, C.P.O., Ruff, A., Vinke, K., Liu, Z., Reck, B.K., Graedel, T.E. and Schellnhuber, H.J. (2020).

Buildings as a global carbon sink.

Nature Sustainability, 3, 269–276. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893019-0462-4 European Commission (2004).

Communication from the Commission - Towards a thematic strategy on the urban environment.

COM/2004/0060 final. Brussels.

Eurostat (2018). Generation of waste by waste category, hazardousness and NACE Rev. 2 activity.

Eurostat.

FAO (2021). FAO Yearbook of Forest Products 2019. https://doi. org/10.4060/cb3795m Circle Economy (2020) The Circularity Gap Report 2020.

Available at: https://assets. website-files.com/5e185aa4d27bcf348400ed82/5e26ead616b6d1d157ff4293_20200120%20 -%20CGR%20Global%20-%20 Report%20web%20single%20 page%20-%20210x297mm%20 -%20compressed.pdf. Addressed on 21.12.2021 Hughes, M. (2019). Cascading Wood, Materials Cycles and Sustainability. In: “Rethinking Wood: Future Dimensions of Timber Assemblies”. Eds. Markus Huddert and Sven Pfeiffer.

Birkhauser, Basel. https://doi.

org/10.1515/9783035617061 Husgafvel, R., Linkosalmi, L., Hughes, M., Kanerva, J. and Dahl, O. (2018). Forest sector circular economy development in Finland: a regional study on sustainability driven competitive advantage and an assessment of the potential for cascading recovered solid wood. Journal of Cleaner Production, 181, 483–497. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.12.176 Jonsson, R., Rinaldi, F., Pilli, R., Fiorese, G., Hurmekoski, E., Cazzaniga, N., Robert, N. and Camia, A. (2021). Boosting the EU Forest-Based Bioeconomy: Market, Climate, and Employment Impacts.

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 163, 120478. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2020.120478 Kalcher, J. Praxmarer, G. and Teischinger, A. (2017) Quantification of future availabilities of recovered wood from Austrian residential buildings. Resources Conservation and Recycling, 123, 143152. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. resconrec.2016.09.001 Leskinen, P., Cardellini, G., González-García, S., Hurmekoski, E., Sathre, R., Seppälä, J., Smyth, C., Stern, T. and Verkerk, P.J. (2018). Substitution effects of wood-based products in climate change mitigation. From Science to Policy 7. European Forest Institute. https://doi.org/10.36333/ fs07

Nasiri, B., Piccardo, C. and Hughes, M. (2021) Estimating the material stock in residential houses in Finland. Waste Management, 135, November 2021, 318-326. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2021.09.007

UN Environment and International Energy Agency (2017). Towards a zero-emission, efficient, and resilient buildings and construction sector. Global Status Report 2017.

Niu, Y., Rasi, K., Hughes, M., Halme, M. and Fink G. (2021). Prolonging life cycles of construction materials and combating climate change by cascading: The case of reusing timber in Finland. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 170 (2021) 105555. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2021.105555 Risse, M., Weber-Blaschke, G. and Richter, K. (2017). Resource efficiency of multifunctional wood cascade chains using LCA and exergy analysis, exemplified by a case study for Germany. Resources Conservation and Recycling 126, 141-152. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2017.07.045 Sakaguchi, D., Takano, A. and Hughes, M. (2017). The potential for cascading wood from demolished buildings: potential flows and possible applications through a case study in Finland. International Wood Products Journal 8(4): 208215. https://doi.org/10.1080/20 426445.2017.1389835

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ROYAL DANISH ACADEMY BUILDING GREEN WORKSHOP 30th of October to 2nd of November, 2021

Two groups from the Royal Danish Academy September workshop were invited to develop larger scale versions of their panels.

The first, pictured here, explored the modular potential of their system, and found that they could create a variety of self-supporting wall forms using identical modular elements.

Both projects were exhibited at Building Green, a large sustainability event in Copenhagen, after which the exhibition continued in a new format at the Royal Danish Academy.

STUDENTS Threaded panel: Simone Greve Larsen / Sebastian Bernhard Seipelt / Malin Wolter / Joachim Jellesmark Malchow-Møller / Self standing panel: Emma Maya Buchanan / Janne Vinther Klausen / Pernille Hammer / Sander Løkkegaard Benner / STAFF Xan Browne / Thorbjørn Lønberg Petersen / Olga Popovic Larsen / Hector G. Grønborg /

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Figure 58/ Previous page: A larger version of the self supported panel. Exhibited in foyer at the Royal Danish Academy Figure 59/ A larger version of the self supported panel. Exhibited in foyer at the Royal Danish Academy

Figure 60-62/ Process photos

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Figure 63/ A larger version of the threaded wood panel. Exhibited in foyer at the Royal Danish Academy

Figure 64/ A larger version of the threaded wood panel, exhibited at Building Green

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STRUCTURAL WASTE WOOD BEAMS

By Xan Browne Phd Student at the Royal Danish Academy & Olga Popovic Larsen Professor at the Royal Danish Academy

Wood is a widely familiar building material that has re-entered the limelight as the construction material of the future. This is no surprise, given the increasing focus on sustainability and wood’s potential to be a renewable building resource. However, this renewability is dependent on timber having longer service lives, that go beyond the regeneration period of trees. Renewability calls for rejecting short term applications and energy recovery as sustainable applications of timber and recognise that biobased resources are not infinitely abundant. This notion requires alternative approaches to design, with an increased consideration for post-consumer wood, material that is most often burned for energy recovery.

Putting the material at the centre of the equation shifts the traditional role of the designer. It asks how we can collaborate with material individuality, rather than relying on processing methods that try to force natural materials to meet industrial standards. These processing methods strive to achieve repeatable standards by removing many of wood’s natural occurrenc-

es. In the case of waste wood’s individuality, the material embodies both its natural history as a tree in the form of knots and grain. As well as the cultural layers obtained from the moment it was sawn into construction lumber, to additions and adaptions from its service life, such as fastening holes and nails.

What if we were to include these individually specific traits as active contributors to future design scenarios?

The Nordic Waste Wood for Good project has been about exactly this, putting the material in question at the centre, and fostering a multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary exploration into what it might become. Through embracing the material individuality, there has emerged a greater resolution of specificity regarding the material in question, and design outcomes.

This melting pot has included many of the actors capable of creating a future with a less wasteful practice of timber.

Emerging policy aims to catalyse the sustainability potential of wood through legislation that requires timber use in future buildings. In

Figure 65/ Waste wood beam prototype

effect, this prescribes a material as a solution to the climate crisis, rather than encouraging best practices. In Europe today we are a long way from best practices, as wood is typically only used once in its solid form, before being converted into particle-based products or burned for energy recovery. This is a wasteful use of wood, an outcome resulting mostly by the heterogeneity of the waste stream. Alongside manmade contaminants, timber’s form changes over time in response to its local conditions. Wood is generally resistant to standardisation, and therefore channelling waste wood

into the existing building applications for timber have proved to show little scalable potential thus far. Industrial approaches together with unfavourable legislation, disrespectful of timber’s heterogeneity remain the main barriers for reuse. Not surprising, waste wood remains low in cultural and economic value, a paradigm that we should challenge if the material’s potential is to be fully realised.

The beam prototype aims to include the traits that we currently consider defects, as agents in creating new approaches to timber architecture. The proto-

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“[...] although the pieces of wood remain as individual elements, structurally they perform together securing a continuous loadpath.”

type demonstrates part of a long span structural system made from short pieces of timber, with the individuality of the elements preserved in the process. This approach respects the qualities of the parts, whilst creating an assembly that can be utilised as a functional building component.

It is inspired by a construction system developed by the Swedish Engineer Hilding Brosenius, that was applied to many long span roof structures across Europe in the early to mid 1900s. Brosenius’ structural members that consisted of nailed together small/slender timber elements, were not suited for disassembly. Unlike them the proposed beam is not glued nor nailed and can be disassembled into its component parts, retaining the possibility for the wood to biodegrade, returning its nutrients to the soil for future growth.

material where there is less certainty of the material performance.

The Waste Wood beam relies on the individual wood pieces to share and transfer the load to the beam supports. So, although the pieces of wood remain as individual elements, structurally they perform together securing a continuous load-path. However, if one were to fail, the beam would remain stable as long as the continuity of the load transfer is ensured. Without doing any complex topological optimisation – due to the inherent redundancy in the beam, the beam can still work even if some of the timber pieces are not functioning.

As an approach, this differs from monolithic components, that can give confidence in using a waste

Focusing on the potential benefits of short timber elements and designing having the material properties in mind, they could be even considered to offer potential structural advantages. Small in size they are less likely to feature critical structural defects such as large knots and in the circumstance that they do, a piece can be rejected without losing large quantities of the material resource.

Short lengths are frequently cited as a non-desirable characteristic of timber waste streams and considered unusable for any meaningful structural applications.

Currently, at best, they are used in glued structures as glue-laminated, cross-laminated or linear members made by finger jointing, all relying on fossil-based adhesives.

Although relatively inexpensive, gluing processes have an environmental impact and to some degree alter the structural behaviour of a timber element.

In addition, the beam prototype also explores incorporating the inherited material traits by preserving the visual diversity of the elements. Current methods for processing timber, such as

Figure 66/ Cross section and isometric view of the beam, as seen in figure 65.

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planing, removes the surface of the material. As a method, when applied to waste wood it removes the nuanced qualities that have evolved during the element’s lifetime.

The prototype on the other hand, exposes the visual heterogeneity, creating fully functioning structural member with a distinctive aesthetic. Recognising that the pieces have had a previous life and framing these in a new ‘whole’ challenges the dichotomy of new and used. It embodies the relationship between time and resources, communicated through the textures and colours of each of the individual pieces.

This prototype example is designed to be of standard dimensions, demonstrating that non-standard pieces (the waste wood) can be assembled into standard components. By being non-specific to a building design, the beam has the potential to be utilised in many building applications over time.

Figure 67/ Waste wood beam mock up Figure 68/ Waste wood beam mock up

As we move towards a future of biobased building resources, the increased pressure on materials such as wood must be met with renewed building practices. By broadening our wood-based solutions and considering the agency of a material as it is inherited, we are better equipped to utilise the material effectively, and capitalise on its many incredible characteristics more widely and for longer.

Furthermore, utilising waste wood in structural applications reduces the need for virgin wood and/ or other mineral based structural materials.This contributes towards a sustainable biobased building practice, with wood’s agency at the centre of resource renewability.

A structural beam is an ancient component typology, that has stood the test of time in both vernacular and contemporary architecture. It is therefore proposed that genericness can increase a component’s resilience to time, furthering the potential lifespan of the material. This extension of the wood’s useful life reduces the pressure on forests and works towards buildings and serving as anthropogenic carbon stores.

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BOURDIEU, CONSUMPTION, AND WASTE-WOOD-PANELS Berit Nilsen Professor at NTNU

Making wood-panels of re-used materials is tapping right into the circular mindset, and as a solution deserves our attention. For the panels to be produced, however, people must want to buy them, for a price making production profitable. The private consumer therefore represents a part that must be on board, and we must understand what shapes people’s preferences and taste.

Liberating forces of modernity led to resourceful individuals having the freedom to choose how to live their lives. When a person’s occupation, family, and home place no longer say who someone is, the individual’s choices instead become about identity construction. What a person chooses to consume to a large extent says something about who that person is, a process referred to as construction of narrative.

According to Pierre Bourdieu, how people construct this narrative is influenced by people’s desire to display distinction – or where they belong, or like to belong, and where they absolutely don’t want to belong socially. This distinc-

tion refers to and to some extent displays the individual’s access to capital. Bourdieu talks of three forms of capital; economic, cultural and social. The first describes people’s access to monetal capital.

Cultural capital is about your embodied and educational recourses, and is showing through your appearance, sociolect, references, education. Social capital refers to your network and social contacts.

The before mentioned distrinction is the sum of how people show where they belong in the intersection of their economic, cultural and social capital, and consumption displays this to an ever increasing degree. In short, if you have enough money, you can buy what you want. What you want will however be affected by your education, upbringing and type of work, and by your social surroundings and network. People with economic, cultural and social capital, are able to distinguish themselves through their consumption pattern from people who lack one or the other forms of capital.

People identify both on an individual and a social level, and research show that sustainable consump-

Figure 69/ Waste wood stained by fungi.

tion can change accordingly, and also varyingly so according to gender. When introducing a product to the marked, understanding how people’s perceptions are related to their access to capital and narrative can in turn inform who might like a product, and how that affects price and demand. For the waste-wood-panels to succeed in a commercial market, they should appeal to a segment that is willing to pay a relatively high price to display their cultural, economic and social capital. Distinction in this context can be about distancing oneself from the ‘fossil generation’, to climate change deniers, to the uneducated and design-ignorant, to those bying mass-produced, unsustainable, imported timber, and the list could go on.

to be trendsetters, meaning that if the panels are well received among them, they might trend, and become in demand in a broader spectre of the population. Taste in the mass market might resemble the high-end market, but the need for distinction is less prominent, and versions of the panels would likely succeed more in a somewhat ‘toned-down’ version. The price would also need to be lower.

Figuring out what different people find valuable and distinctive about the panels, is therefore of high importance both in the production and promotion of the panels.

There is also a tendensy for highly resourceful individuals and groups,

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NTNU WORKSHOP INTRODUCTION September 2020

At NTNU, the workshop formed part of the course Design in Context, where the aim was to run an architecture office as close to reality as possible. The focus of the workshop was learning by doing and took departure from waste wood material gathered from Heggstadmoen recycling station and Moelven Glulam.

Opening with a lecture series and discussion, students were presented with perspectives relating to wood and the value chain.

This included, Berit Nilsen, Jens Olgard Delseth Røyrvik, and Kristoffer Nergård from NTNU Social Science, followed by carpenter Hallvar Skogmo, and circular economy advisor Marina Skanche from Loopfront. The student groups were quickly inspired by the waste wood material, and found virtue in the range of diversity. This showed itself in the resulting panels, where the individual creativity of the groups and material traits are displayed.

STUDENTS Martie Solhaug / Per Bernstein / Krzysztof Pietura / Martin Hamarsland / André N. Berlin / Sina M. Hasve / Kotryna Navickaite / Evelina Bart / Fabian Meszaros Mykland / Jesper Vik / Magnhild Sandbakken / Anders S. Hoel / Hallvar Skogmo / Martin Vilhelmson / STAFF Pasi Aalto / Berit Nilsen / Kristoffer Nergård / Vegard Forbergskog / Jens Olgard Delseth Røyrvik / Hallvar Skogmo / Marina Skanche /

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Figure 70/ Previous page: Waste wood panel from the NTNU workshop Figure 71/ Panel made from mixed boards Figure 72/ Close up of figure 72

Figure 73/ Panel made from mixed boards Figure 74/ Close up of figure 73

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Figure 75/ Panel made from profiled boards Figure 76/ Close up of figure 75

Figure 77/ Panel made from mixed boards Figure 78/ Close up of figure 77

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Figure 79/ Previous page: Digital visualisation showing figure 75 in a larger scale Figure 80/ Panel made from pine offcuts Figure 81/ Close up of figure 80

Figure 82/ Panel made from mixed boards Figure 83/ Close up of figure 82

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Figure 84/ Panel made from pine offcuts Figure 85/ Close up of figure 84

Figure 86/ Panel made from mixed boards Figure 87/ Close up of figure 86

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Figure 88/ Previous page: Photo from the NTNU workshop Figure 89/ Panel made from pine offcuts Figure 90/ Close up of figure 89

Figure 91/ Panel made from pine floorboards Figure 92/ Close up of figure 91

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Figure 93/ Previous page: Digital visualisation showing figure 91 in a larger scale Figure 94/ Photo from the Trondheim workshop

Figure 95/ Photo from the Trondheim workshop

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TIMBER IN CONSTRUCTION

By Roberto Crocetti Professor at KTH Stockholm

Increased use of wood in construction is an important part of the solution to promote sustainable societal development. This could be achieved by replacing significant parts of steel and concrete, both of which are non-renewable materials.

At present we are facing climate change such as higher temperatures with probable effects on the Nordic forests. Established findings and simulations show that climate change is leading to a major change in terms of suitable wood species for future forestry. There are thus strong indications that the spruce will thrive worse and that this means a larger spread of deciduous species in the Nordic forest, mainly birch.

The potential in the Nordic countries is great to both plant and further process birch (and possibly other hardwoods) into products used for structural applications.

Birch has much better strength properties than common softwoods that are traditionally used in constructions in the Nordic countries. Therefore, birch (and some other hardwood species that also grow in the Nordic countries, e.g. oak, beech and ash) are

particularly suitable for special applications, such as for connections that require higher material quality.

TIMBER CONNECTIONS Compared to other building materials, timber has indisputable advantages in terms of environmental impact, aesthetics, lightness, formability and fire resistance.

Moreover, the very high strengthto-weight ratio of timber makes it very suitable for large-span structures such as trusses, arches and frames. However, a major drawback of timber when used in heavy structures is the difficulty to achieve connections with adequate strength and stiffness.

There are a few connections available in the market place which allow the transmission of large forces from one member to another in timber structures, perhaps the most common being the multiple-shear steel-timber connection.

This type of connection includes a number of steel plates allocated in slots made in the timber members - the transmission of shear between steel and timber occurring by means of steel dowels.

Both the steel plates and the

Figure 96/ Technical drawing showing wood in the custom connections

timber parts must be predrilled in advance with very small tolerances for misalignment of the holes. This requires a very high degree of accuracy and not seldom it leads to errors that need to be mended at the building site, e.g. by enlarging the holes at the timber parts, thus reducing both the strength and the stiffness of the connection.

Moreover, a relatively large amount of steel is needed for the manufacture of such connections, which negatively affects the environmental impact.

It is therefore highly interesting to investigate the possibility of “modernizing” the traditional multiple-shear steel-timber connection by reducing the amount of steel and at the same time making it less sensitive to tolerances. An idea, which is currently being investigated at KTH-Stockhom, is that the traditional multiple-shear steel-timber connection can be redesigned by replacing the steel plates and the dowels with timber based gusset plates and full-threaded screws or dowels, respectively. By doing so, and by creating several shear planes, connections with strength and stiffness adequate for heavy timber structures, e.g. trusses,

arches, portal frames, etc. would be possible.

A further technique which is planned to be investigated within shortly is the possibility of bonding the birch plywood plates to the timber members. By doing so, very high strength and stiffness can be achieved at the connections, with reduced production costs.

For moderate to long span (up to approximately 40 m), the timber material adopted for the structural elements could be individual pieces of structural lumber. For larger spans, elements of either re-sawn glulam, unidirectional LVL or ordinary glulam are more suitable.

FINALLY Finally, it is also necessary to find production methods that use the wood material in a more resource-efficient way. These methods must be effective in terms of the amount of material used but also in terms of simple factory production and simple, fast and high precision assembling on construction sites. Preferably, the adopted materials/ structural members should also be easy to reuse or recycle.

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FROM WASTE TO RESOURCE

By Pasi Aalto Centre Director of NTNU Wood

Public bodies, the building industry and private consumers are all driving a societal change where waste is becoming a resource. In the case of wood, the discourse includes carbon storage and growth of new forests, the technical degradation of wood in buildings, documentation requirements and the necessary processes of re-testing - just to name a few. The common denominator for the discourses is the need to guarantee a minimum level of safe re-use of wood so that we can curb our emissions and use of resources - a very important goal.

The devil, however, is in the details. Re-using wood in practice has proven to be difficult. At the moment, three distinct approaches are emerging.

Firstly, a skilled and highly effective team consisting of architects, engineers, carpenters and project owners can approach an existing building, analyse it and through dialogue establish the processes needed to re-use its elements and materials in another building currently underway.

Secondly, some buildings do not yet have a home when they are

ready for dismantling, making it necessary to store materials and elements. This introduces re-use as a marketplace but has to strike a fine balance between high land prices near development or high transport costs and emissions if the storage is located further away.

Finally, a digitally dependent option exists where existing buildings are mapped while still standing to create comprehensive databases of potentially re-usable materials.

In practice, all three approaches are utilised as a combined framework for supporting re-use processes. However, much of the ongoing innovation, especially driven by young, environmentally conscious start-ups, is focused on the digital tools that deal with data collection, storage and sharing.

These wonderful new tools provide the necessary platforms to document the necessary data for structural calculations, emissions, fire resistance - as well as the location and availability of the materials or elements themselves.

While developing at a (necessary) rapid pace, the digital tools are still based on the mindset of nec-

Figure 97/ Glulam offcuts at a norwegian manufacturer

essary data for enabling re-use as well generic categories of building products. A piece of wood is documented as just that, a generic piece of wood that should hold up to some technical standards in order to be re-used. The tools do not account for the history and cultural significance of the wood, be that visible or invisible. For the sake of argument, consider a fine wine that not only is meticulously described in terms of both quantitative and qualitative aspects at the time of bottling, but also eagerly discussed over the following years in terms of the changes the it goes through. In contrast, our

current approach to Wood re-use is that of trying to convince everyone the wine has not changed, at least not enough to be poisonous.

What is fitting with a comparison to wine, is that a few decades ago, many of the wine regions that are considered extremely valuable today, were being uprooted and redeveloped - grapes had no value and were considered a waste. Now, the qualities over time account for a large part of the value created.

While stored wine is not poisonous, the bar was set higher by pioneers and innovators, making the industry what it is today. We can learn much from the mindset.

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As we do not yet understand the causalities, nor the individual potentials within this new landscape of potential, the first approach to exploring it is massive experimentation combined with open sharing of results. Established companies can be open about their business models and what would be needed for them to change towards more circularity, both in the short and long term. Similarly, start-ups should be given arenas to present, test and develop their ideas in collaboration with others to promote a steady stream of testing new ideas. The public will have an important role both as lawmaker, but also a significant purchaser of products and services that can prioritise innovation and nurture early phase development.

However, a large responsibility must be placed on our educational system. The introduction of re-use into projects requires new knowledge, skills and competence. This includes the systematic research required to establish the required knowledge in each domain and the pedagogic and didactic approaches to encourage student learning. Ultimately, the goal needs to be more people in society that can participate in the necessary change towards a low-carbon circular society. In this future, the re-use of resources, such as wood, is central.

“However, a large responsibility must be placed on our educational system.

The introduction of re-use into projects requires new knowledge, skills and competence.”

resources at a larger level has to be considered a wicked problem that has great many dynamics and unknowns, engaging in a hands-on project with clear goals and an explorative approach seems to work well in motivating students and their learning. This creates a good foundation to engage in more complex aspects of re-use later on. Combining this with not only research, but also a culture of creativity shows that a multifaceted experimentation will likely yield most early ideas the fastest.

Finally, there must be a good interplay between actors. The goal must be a strive towards a more circular use of our resources, but this must be done through collaboration. Many of the changes within re-use are structural in nature as well as having a definitive cultural aspect. Experimentation will create spearheads, values will create targets, but collaboration will definitely be the great mover.

Of the current teaching practices, problem based learning shows great promise. While re-use of

Figure 98/ Mixed waste wood from the NTNU workshop

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TO SEE THE FOREST FOR THE TREES

By Saara Kantele Architect and designer

HOW SHOULD WE USE THE FORESTS? Not to see the forest for the trees is a Finnish saying, and it seems to be our challenge as well. To a nation long dependent on the forest industry, a welfare state built upon economic growth and exports based on wood products, forests have traditionally be viewed first and foremost as a material resource. 92% of Finnish forest area is classified for economic use and around 97 % of this managed by even aged forestry (2020), in which a forest is regrown after end cut. This has been the post-war approach; to maximise wood production with little room to consider other forest values.

Attitudes are changing though, along with diversification of the sources of Finnish GDP: topical conversation highlights forest biodiversity, the values of old forests and appropriate harvesting levels.

Moreover, studies show that Finns would generally reduce harvesting volume and limit the clearcuttings and even of the forest owners only half generally approve of clearcutting, with 3/4 approving of them on occasion (PTT 2020). These kind of views and opinions are still often seen as ‘soft’, ‘emotional’ and unprofitable.

Why do we care, and why is it ok to care?

The abundance of wood, of forests, in the Nordic region makes it easy for us to see wood as an endless resource. Forests are everywhere, of Finnish land area 3/4 is covered by forests (Ministry of agriculture and forestry of Finland). It is easy to see wood as a sustainable, renewable resource, and perhaps more difficult to find reasons to restrain its use or to limit harvesting. At the same time, it is reality that we should reduce our use of fossil-based materials e.g. different plastics and the use of textiles, such as cotton, the growth of which is environmentally damaging. Wood-based products are presented as environmental alternatives to these. It may also be argued that if the wood-based materials are not produced in the Nordics, they are imported from regions with less responsible forestry practices instead. This is a genuine threat. Why then not to solve these problems by increasing the use of wood – a local renewable material that we have plenty of?

Figure 99/ Cultural forest landscape at Koli Photo: Saara Kantele

THE NORDIC CHALLENGE It is true that we have a lot of trees in the Nordic region. The severe global deforestation problems, with over 178 million hectares of forest gone since the 1990’s, are mainly realising in the tropical forests (Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020). The Nordic forest utilising problems do lie elsewhere and are perhaps less obvious to spot.

The biodiversity loss is an ongoing tragedy and despite international agreements the tide has not yet turned. Most Finnish species are dependent on forest ecosys-

tems. Of Finnish species, the ones that are well known enough to be evaluated, 11,9% are endangered, a figure that is growing. The most significant factors affecting this being changes in the forest biotopes – most commonly due to renewal of forests, cultivation methods, and a decrease in old forests, large trees, and rotten wood. Moreover, in Finland regionally, many forest species have endangered or extinct populations, such as the Siberian jay, which has almost gone from the other parts of the country apart from Lapland (Hyvärinen at al, The red book of Finnish nature 2019).

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The gross harvest of Finland has been growing substantially during the last decade. After being around 60 million m3 at 2009 it has grown rapidly to a pre-pandemic peak of 78 million m3 in 2018, and 69 million m3 in 2020 (LUKE). And there is hunger for more, if the pandemic ceases to hinder export.

The National Resource Institute of Finland has calculated that there is potential to increase the harvest, with the largest maintainable harvest level for the next decade being 80,5 million m3 yearly.

Meanwhile, there is general debate on the sustainable harvest level.

The increased wood harvesting affects the forests’ ability to function as carbon sink. Even taking into account the carbon negative impact using wood products (similar to current way), a simulation research suggests (Seppälä et al 2019) that to increase the average Finnish harvest volume even to a level below the year 2018 volume would present a challenge to the climate change mitigation potential due to the shrinking forest carbon sink. This happening during’ the decades most relevant to battle the climate change may have severe consequences. The EU forest strategy has taken a related approach, advising the member countries to retain the forest carbon sink volume at the level of 2000–2009, which for Finland means total harvest of 60 million m3. Extensive harvest also contributes to other forest dependent livelihoods e.g., the rapidly growing nature tourism, and the

recreational use of forests.

Due balancing the climate and heatlhy ecosystems, and acting as a major carbon sink, forests are vital to human existence on the planet. At the same time, they are complicated entities with also intrinsic value, a network of interacting species rather than an arrangement of trees. Forests have been covering the planet since Devonian period 370 million years ago, and the majority of the existing fauna and flora, humans included, have develop into the biotopes they have created. Surely this calls for some respect.

HEALTHY ECOSYSTEMS THROUGH MATERIAL WISDOMNESS We need a holistic approach to forests. There are boundaries to the use of forest resources. Our silviculture needs to take into account the multiple values of the forests.

For maintaining healthy ecosystems, to using wood sustainably, we need to define what we mean by sustainable forestry. In the Nordic context it is easy to claim that our forest management is already sustainable, as suggested earlier though, we are sometimes too close to see the whole image.

For our forestry to be sustainable, we need diversity to management of the forests, e.g., increasingly the use of continuous cover forestry, and comprehensive preservation area networks to sustain diverse forest biotopes and forest species.

We would also need to set the harvest volume limit to a level that would support healthy ecosys-

Figure 100/ Forest in Repovesi Photo: Saara Kantele

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tems, the direction we already must take as a result of tightening EU regulations.

Thus, we are facing the situation where we are unable to increase the harvest amount to significantly substitute the use of other harmful materials, including concrete, cotton and plastic-based materials, and also to meet the forest-based energy and biofuel expectations.

We need material wisdomness and thoughful use of wood. Increasingly valuable virgin materials should only go where they are most needed or are of considerable advantage. Currently 2/3 of harvested Finnish wood goes to cellulose or energy, and 1/3 to wood products (LUKE). Already by increasing the quality grade, targeting the use of wood to long lasting products including buildings and furniture, we could add more value and cascading potentiality to the trees harvested. We could contribute to creating jobs simultaneously, by supporting labor-intensive fields and local production.

Figure 101/ Siberian jay at Oulanka National Park Photo: Saara Kantele Figure 102/ Life at deadwood Nuuksio national park Photo: Saara Kantele

By the means of cascading, a considerable part of wood demands could be met by re-using wood and creating new value in each step. In a society obsessed with efficiency, we should be thrilled to imagine a considerable increase in wood material efficiency, by cascading each harvested tree trunk multiple times. Apart from trees, we should look to other sources of fiber-based materials, including under-utilised side streams of food production. Being more efficient

with what we have will help reduce the pressure on forests.

Multiple challenges remain, time being one of them in relation to climate threats. How to speed up the slow change? One of the obvious means of change is to decrease consumption altogether. ‘ REFERENCES Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Finland, Metsien Suojelu Suomessa.

Metsäkeskus, Jatkuvan kasvatuksen hakkuut ovat hieman lisääntyneet: https://www.metsakeskus.fi/en/ node/1021 WWF 2019: Tutkimus: Lähes neljä viidestä rajoittaisi avohakkuita lailla Ministry of agriculture and forestry of Finland: mmm.fi, Forest resources in Finland Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020 Key findings, 2 Seppälä et al 2019: Effect of increased wood harvesting and utilization on required greenhouse gas displacement factors of woodbased products and fuels LUKE: https://www.luke.fi/uutinen/kotimaisen-raakapuun-kaytto-uuteen-ennatykseen-2018/

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AALTO UNIVERSITY WORKSHOP INTRODUCTION November 2021

In Aalto we decided to create a course around the waste wood theme to deepen the learning outcome.

The goal was to give the students the basic knowledge of the wood material cycle from forests to cascading, to learn of the available possibilities of the wood material re-use, and design and make an object using demolition and construction waste – an available and unutilized opportunity of a material source.

The motivated student group consisted of multiple backgrounds and majors, ranging from chemical, design, architectural, forestry and business backgrounds, and worked in multidisciplinary pairs. The students researched very different aspects of wood waste usage, thus to our pleasure the collective course work forms a clear, multifaceted image of challenges and possibilities of demolition wood waste in different scales and stages of cascading.

STUDENTS Jason Selvarajan / Neha Sharma / Janika Hart / Aarni Tujula / Amanda Barlebo / Marikki Nygård / Paul Mesarcik / Satyaki Roy / Otto Joutsiniemi / Minttu Marikki / Felix Valentin Dingeldein / Jenny Marie Jakobsen / Lukas Martin Schuck / STAFF Mark Hughes / Saara Kantele / Xan Browne / Hector Grundtdal Grønborg /

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ILLUMINATED IMAGERY

By Paul Mesarcik & Satyaki Roy

A vast amount of the wood that we painstakingly harvest is crushed and burned once it has fulfilled its first purpose. This wood is often perfectly good for many more uses. Wood Shrine tries to reconnect us to this material store, demonstrating that our attention and craft can elevate “waste” to the level of a shrine.

Wood Shrine is made entirely from “waste” wood found on dump sites. The shrine is handcrafted using traditional woodworking techniques. The veneering process enables large surface areas to be covered using few, small pieces of wood. Many of the veneers are made

from pieces under 30cm which cannot usually be safely machined.

The piece evokes a reverence for the material, calling on religious iconography to inspire a sense of awe. However, hidden in the symbolism are the molecules and material required for the photosynthesis process, one of the Earth’s most profound and valuable natural processes.

Wood Shrine poses a new god: cyclical consumption and a deep gratitude for the Earth’s natural processes that support our material and spiritual existence.

Figure 103/ Previous page: Panel from the Aalto workshop Figure 104/ Panel made from small pieces of reclaimed pine Figure 105/ Close up of figure 104

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Figure 106/ Group process photo Figure 107/ Group process photo, testing translucency Figure 108/ Close up of figure 109

Figure 109/ Figure 104 shown lit, in darkness Figure 110/ Close up of figure 109

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WASTE WOOD TERRAZZO

By Janika Hart & Aarni Tujula

The waste wood terrazzo panel is inspired by terrazzo tiles to bring out the variety of demolition waste wood chips and to present an alternative way to utilise waste wood chips before burning them for energy. This adds another cascading step, which lengthens the life cycle of wood materials.

It contains waste wood chips that are a very heterogeneous material, in terms of shape and size as well as materials and treatment.

The waste wood “terrazzo” was produced by gluing wood chips parallelly together with carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC), also a wood-based material.

The glued structure was sawed into a few centimetre thick slices

to create bundles of wood chips with a cut surface on both sides.

These slices were glued onto plywood to hold them in place and to combine them into a visually appealing product.

Bigger structures can be formed either by gluing these slices next to each other or possibly by making a bigger glued structure, although this would need more efficient gluing. The waste wood terrazzo panel could be used as a decorative art piece on a wall, and it can possibly have moisture buffering properties thanks to the wood.

Figure 111/ Panel made from wood chips and plywood Figure 112/ Group process photo, sorting wood chips

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Figure 113/ Group process photo, gluing chips together Figure 114/ Close up of figure 111

Figure 115/ Close up of figure 111

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WOOD PUZZLE

By Amanda Barlebo & Marikki Nygård

One major challenge associated with wood waste is its heterogeneity. Wood waste usually consists of a great number of different kinds of pieces that all have different properties and looks. We created Wood Puzzle to embrace that challenge and transform the heterogeneity from disadvantage into advantage. The work aims to demonstrate that what we see as a wood waste is still very much usable and beautiful.

Wood Puzzle is a modular piece that consists of six different panels in three different sizes. Each module is joined from various wood pieces but standardized by using the same species. Pieces

within each module are joined by glue to secure their durability and lifetime. The modules otherwise are left unattached to maximize the diverse use of the piece.

In this work, we are also exploring how by cutting the same pieces differently we can create very different kinds of surfaces.

Wood Puzzle can be used for example as a table top or as interior cladding. Each module can be used separately, or they can be combined in multiple ways to create a pleasing combination. Like puzzle pieces.

Figure 116/ Panel made from mixed wood waste Figure 117/ Close up of figure 116

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Figure 118-119/ Group process photos, preparing the wood Figure 120/ Close up of figure 116

Figure 121/ Group process photos, testing finishing techniques

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THE WASTE WOOD SPECTRUM

By Otto Valtteri Joutsiniemi & Jenny Marie Jakobsen

This panel consists of 12 planks that gradually goes from ugly to nice from top to bottom.

It shows how much the woodwaste has to change to not be looked upon as wood-waste and questions if this view can be changed.

The process looked at the issue regarding planks with nails in them. They are an obstacle when it comes to using used-wood. How to overcome this?

We met this obstacle by removing the pieces with nails in them using a hand saw, taking the approach what equipment an everyday person would have

available. Two cut out pieces with nails is added to the panel. When the nails are removed it is counter intuitive to use new nails to fasten the panel. We looked on other ways of combing planks and went for using dowels made out of left over pieces.

This panel shows what today is regarded as wood-waste and what is not. Furthermore, the panel is what has to be reimagined. Why can’t the middle pieces be picked up as normal wood, and what new functionality can be found in the pieces furthest to the left? Let us start to look differently at the spectrum of wood-waste.

Figure 122/ Previous panel: Close up of figure 116 Figure 123/ Panel made from reclaimed pine boards Figure 124/ Close up of figure 123

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Figure 125-127/ Group process photo, sorting waste wood based on quality and usability

Figure 128/ Close up of figure 123

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DIFFUSING AND ABSORBING

By Jason Selvarajan & Neha Sharma

We have created four prototype acoustic wood panels of approx.

50x50cm. The material is demolition waste wood consisting mainly of birch and spruce ranging from logs to planks. The wood was cleaned with a metal brush and nails were removed. Rough sketches of the panels were prepared but each building session was based on different types of wood, so some ‘freestyling’ was involved.

From top left to bottom right LOG DISPERSER Wooden logs from an old building were shaped with chainsaw and halved with a bandsaw and attached to a backboard with wooden screws.

FABRIC ABSORBER Plank wood was planed, cut at 45 degree angles and glued together.

Layers of used cotton sheets were arranged within a wooden frame and attached with staples.

BLOCK DISPERSER 2by4’s, 2 inches by 4 inches, were planed and cut to angles from 20-45 degrees. Blocks were glued together in an arbitrary shape.

Commonly these types of panels are based on patterns with more predictable sound diffusion qualities.

The panels were tested at the company Lumir, which specializes in fully bio-based spray on acoustic technology and audio testing.

PERFORATED DISPERSER The perforated panel was made from plank wood that was glued into a board and milled with a CNC router.

Figure 129/ Panel consisting of 4 seperate elements, made from mixed waste wood Figure 130/ Close up of figure 129

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Figure 131/ Group process photo, sawing logs to create grooves for sound diffusion Figure 132/ Group process photo, cutting and laying out blocks to create a faceted surface, for sound diffusion Figure 133/ Group process photo, audio testing facility.

An object is placed on the raised platform and sound is directed from the arch above. Microphones, mounted on the arch, record absorbtion and diffusion

Figure 134/ Close up of figure 129

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BIOCHAR AS A PIGMENT

By Felix Valentin Dingeldein & Lukas Martin Schuck

Recovering energy from chipped (waste) wood is the most com­mon use case for discarded wood. In order to challenge this systematic routine, our work set focus on exploring the potential of partial combustion, towards the last stage of the wood cascading system.

Our team converted (waste) wood chips into char through pyrolysis, thus converting large proportions of the contained car­bon into stable form. After analyzing the properties of the char and linking them to various possible applications, our team decided to develop a bio-based black paint based upon an “Non-Acrylic Paint” recipe from the CHEMARTS cookbook.

Our approach show-cased possible benefits from rethinking the current status quo in utilizing (waste) wood. Instead of merely burning (waste) wood for energy recovery, we can capture and store proportions of carbon embedded in it by utilizing it to color various surfaces.

The promising properties of char relating to moisture buffering, fire resistance as well as heat- and electric conductivity of char open up new realms of potential applications. It becomes imaginable that walls painted with CHARPAINT could be used as heating elements within building.

Figure 135/ Panel made from waste pine, waste chipboard and biochar Figure 136/ Close up of figure 135

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Figure 137/ Group process photo, Burning waste wood to create char for paint application Figure 138/ Biochar applied, excess subsequently scraped away for a stain effect

Figure 139/ Group process photo, testing paint samples

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BAMBOO, A REMOTE PRACTICE

By Alison Grace Martin Weaver, Italy

Weaving bamboo was not an inevitable career path. About 30 years ago we moved from Milan to this rather remote rural area of northern Tuscany, aiming to live more sustainably while our young family was growing up. We were able to grow and produce some of what we needed to consume but real self-sufficiency is hard to achieve, especially for a family of ex-townies. We kept our main focus on making the most of our resources and learning to live in harmony with our surroundings.

There was a forest of bamboo growing on our land when we came here. It’s not a native plant to Italy; it was probably introduced a couple of centuries ago as an ornamental or for agricultural purposes. This species of bamboo (Phyllostachys) is invasive and tends to infest all surrounding land; left uncontrolled there would be no land left for our other crops of fruit and olive trees, cereals and vegetables. New shoots have to be cut each year, and old canes are also removed as they split and dry.

The latter are chopped into short lengths and split – they make excellent kindling for our wood stove which we use for cooking and warmth.

The hills around here are steep and prone to mud slides and soil erosion – bamboo thrives on sloping, degraded soils and is an important tool for soil stabilization. A fast regenerating resource with an extensive root system which survives annual harvesting.

Being a grass not a tree, it grows to its final height in a season, and accumulates carbon quickly. Bamboo plantations effectively store carbon and there are some attractive possibilities for its use as a replacement for timber or steel in some types of construction. What bamboo lacks in terms of rigidity and other attributes in common with normal timber materials, it makes up for in terms of flexibility and elasticity. The tensile strength of bamboo compares favourably to that of mild steel. An awareness of its material behaviour means we need to establish novel fabrication processes to exploit its attributes in terms of structural performance.

While this is a small and site-specific case study, most of our objectives are in tune with those of the Nordic Waste Wood for Good project. We are essentially both looking at a ‘waste’ product – in the sense that the surplus bamboo poles would normally have to be

Figure 140/ Previous page: Close up of figure 135 Figure 141/ Bamboo forest in Italy

disposed of (burnt) without being ‘used’. The management of bamboo incurs a cost only in terms of energy and time; it is effectively a free material source.

The process of producing timber for construction and furniture making processes is actually rather slow – it takes about 50 years between planting seedling trees to having a tree ready to cut down for timber planks. It’s also costly in terms of energy when we include attendant machinery and processing. Taking this into account it would appear to be worthwhile to reconsider our production and use

of these commodities. By choosing to work with a material that is fast-growing, (bamboo poles are ready for harvest in 3-4 years) we are intervening at source, and taking advantage of an abundantly available, naturally self-regenerating material, in its less processed state.

Lack of durability in external conditions means that bamboo is not generally considered a good building material for permanent structures; and for the time being most people don’t want to live in bamboo huts. Hopefully this seems destined to change – bamboo ar-

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chitects at Ibuku, Bali and Marina Tabassum in Bangla Desh have recently been awarded international architecture prizes for their innovative, functional and beautiful work.

Bamboo does not lend itself to conventional carpentry and joinery techniques. The culms are hollow and will split if nails are used.

These poles are 10 – 12 metres tall with an average diameter of 5 or 6 centimetres; sometimes as much as 12cm. at the base.

Weaving seemed an ideal way to fabricate bamboo structures with minimal means and was appropriate as I lacked conventional building or carpentry skills. Not having any start-up capital meant being able to limit costs to near zero was necessary. The only investments have been of my time and the purchase of a few hand tools - saw, knife and bamboo splitter.

Splitting bamboo by hand is a relatively easy technique to learn as the plant’s fibres are generally parallel and naturally tend to split straight. The resulting strips are well suited to weaving.

The principle of material interlacing generates local systems of friction-based reciprocity, sturdy and stable without the need for metal fixings. Resulting artefacts have aesthetic properties, diverse arenas of utility and emergent properties beyond their constituent materials. Woven structures were a useful aid to self-reliance in our small scale agricultural and horticultural projects.

“The only investments have been of my time and the purchase of a few hand tools - saw, knife and bamboo splitter”

Apart from the material itself, the intrinsic properties of woven meshes are well worth studying. I have endeavoured to learn traditional crafts not only for their own sake but also in order to find ways to ingeniously use what is available in terms of materials and within my own skills.

GEOMETRY OF MESHES My design work is grounded in physical model building; I rely on model making to gain intuition. I’m fascinated by the mathematical inevitability of natural form – the geometric properties of meshes have relevance to pure mathematics, geometric modelling, computer graphics and building science.

Basket makers and computational designers share problems regarding the geometric design of patterns of surfaces and issues of surface subdivision and manipulation. It’s apparent that woven lines of bamboo tend to follow approximately geodesic paths on a curved mesh. The long lengths of bamboo interwoven in a basket network all contribute equally to its overall strength. A basket weaving pattern may be interpreted as representing a topological map of its structure. Woven bamboo lattices have the potential to become a tacit form-finding tool with which to explore tessellations of the plane

Figure 142/ Bamboo close up

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and curved surfaces as well as 3D space filling lattices. By using flexible strips of freshly cut green bamboo the ensuing woven mesh may be curved thus leaving behind the flat constraints of planar geometry. Surface weaving /tiling patterns (triangles, quads and hexagons) can be manipulated or deformed into spherical or hyperbolic surface geometries by adding or subtracting from the number of elements at a crossing. This has led to a very thorough exploration of traditional weaving patterns, aiming to better understand and push beyond conventional limits.

Versatility of weaving in different applications is enhanced by its various material properties. A woven mesh can be reconfigured with adaptable geometry for given shape or material properties such as geometric composition and load distribution.

Conversations and collaborations with computational architects and mechanical engineers have been fruitful towards this end. Combining digital design technology and low-tech bamboo construction techniques to make physical prototypes has proved a useful way to demonstrate and further the dialogue between the disciplines.

Seeing designs in the real world is clearly a highly motivating outcome. My proudest achievement has been winning international lightweight structures contest in Amsterdam. Despite being an outsider with no engineering or architectural qualifications and without software skills to employ

in the design, the four-meter tall reciprocal space-frame bamboo structure won out against tough competition from well-resourced teams from prestigious institutions (MIT, Cambridge University etc.)

More recent work has focused on deployable structures. The deployment of these slender structures uses the mechanical features of a beam grid to generate a three-dimensional shape. They are designed to avoid issues of complex hand building in situ. They can be constructed flat and then expanded into larger, curved 3D structures that are relatively stable and transportable in 2D fabrication configuration and a desired 3D deployed shape can be erected at the destination, without requiring a skilled workforce.

Bamboo grids of flexible lengths of split bamboo are connected by inserting nuts and bolts into drilled holes along the length. They then expand into a curved shape when stretched. The shape which emerges depends on the precise spacing between the crossings of the bamboo strips. As it is difficult to tune this manually, working with colleagues who have parametric design competences means we have been able to achieve more

“I’m driven by a strong belief in craft and my concerns about the unknown consequences of losing the human capacity to make things”

Figure 143/ Bamboo structures for agriculture

precision. Throughout the process there has been a dynamic interaction; the computational design tools initially needed to be developed to catch up with the traditional weaving techniques. The software was soon pushing beyond existing basketry competences and manual skills needed to be upgraded in order to achieve new target shapes.

I’m optimistic that we will be able to build on the success of collaborations with KADK (Copenhagen) Centre for Information Technology and Architecture – where 3 papers have so far been published.

Currently kagome weaving is being employed in developing a fully integrated structural substrate for growing fungal mycelium with the intent of growing architecture.

Work with mechanical engineers at EPFL (Lausanne) Flexible Structures Laboratory has led to a paper being published in Physics Review Letters and a subsequent research project with the School for Computer and Communication Science was presented at SIGGRAPH 2021. I feel that this inter-disciplinary aspect leading to conversations about fundamental natural structures materials science, crystallography and

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Figure 144/ Bamboo shoot Figure 145/ Bamboo collected for processing Figure 146/ Bamboo being cut with a specialised tool Figure 147/ Bamboo with a bolted connection Figure 148/ Split bamboo Figure 149/ Bamboo structures for agriculture Figure 150/ Woven bamboo pattern Figure 151/ Process photo from one of Alison Martin’s workshops Figure 152/ Woven bamboo sculptures

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Figure 153/ Process photo from one of Alison Martin’s workshops

structural inorganic chemistry has been one of the most surprising and worthwhile outcomes so far. I hope that the intersection with mathematics and materials science may lead to practical applications in engineering fields.

New three dimensional - multiaxial, volumetric - weaving technologies might lead to lighter more flexible buildings and it may be possible to create architectural scale textile modules which would connect into large scale pop-up structures and achieve a large volume with minimal material use.

WORKSHOPS I’m convinced that structures can best be appreciated and learned by building models and contemplating them. The workshops I run respond to the challenge as to how structures should be taught. Working with software alone is unlikely to lead to an unfettered perception of spatial relationships. It’s hard to relate to geometry beyond right angles and cuboids without physical models to examine. A hands-on approach helps to demystify things and unleash creativity, imagination and a sense of empowerment.

This is an approach that prioritizes manual skills and local materials

over large scale, more technical solutions. If only limited materials (local, free, waste/ recycling) are available there will be a need to reinvent the potential product range.

It may be possible to conceive an “inverse design process” – starting from the properties the material offers and to aiming to explore the ‘wilder’ vocabulary of shapes which can result from an observed set of material properties. Collaborations so far have featured a common interest in self built projects and in promoting diverse ways of learning and knowing; an investigation of new shapes and thinking about how to embed impermanence as a positive feature. We aim to inspire students to become less dependent on perpendicular/ orthogonal directions, to do without bespoke joints and fixings, to do without expensive machinery and to work around conventional carpentry and joinery techniques.

way of thinking and I’m interested in prolonging the opportunity of thinking with the hands. It’s interesting that if we resort to handmade technologies we can build whatever we imagine, without any of the restrictions that machines impose, based on what they were designed to do.

Our design and construction process should be contemporary and at the same time rooted to place, informed by climate and geography.

I’m driven by a strong belief in craft and my concerns about the unknown consequences of losing the human capacity to make things; as well as the loss of many ancient well-crafted objects. Living where I do, I am inevitably influenced and inspired by the landscape and historic architecture; the traditional way of life in the recent past strikes me as having been human centric and well crafted. We may not yet be fully aware of the implications on society when we no longer know how to do basic things with our hands like sew or knit. Making has an impact on the mind and its evolution. Making is a

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FINAL THOUGHTS

By Olga Popovic Larsen Professor at The Royal Danish Academy

We have come to the end of an exciting and very rich journey.

With the project, it has been a path of discovery, surprise and joy in exploring exciting new ways of utilizing waste wood. Initially planned as an 8 month project, due to the covid pandemic and associated restrictions the project has lived for nearly two years. In this time many things have changes and developed. The extended period, although frustrating at times, has enabled us to reflect, analyse, observe and develop our ideas further.

More than 180 students from the four partner Universities: The Royal Danish Academy, The Norwegian Technical University, Aalto and KTH Royal Institute of Technology together with staff from the institutions have come up with the results presented in this book.

The results are more than we could hope for – showing the huge potential for architectural applications of waste wood. At present some of the wood waste is used either for lower purpose applications and most of it burned or disposed as landfill. Whereas burning and waste wood provides heat and energy, it is clearly a lost

opportunity in the climate crisis battle. By keeping the solid (waste) wood in use as a solid material, without degrading it, as long as possible we give a good material an extended life and contribute to the CO2 storage – so desperately needed currently.

The panels presented in this book with their tactility and aesthetic touch our senses. We would like to touch them; they invite us to interpret them as geometry compositions and consider them for architectural applications. Even though they are not yet architecture, we can see the aesthetic potential as with their proportions and expression they have created value – they are no longer waste but a promise that through design and the agency of the (waste) material we can create values that have not been there before.

Judged not only on the aesthetic values, but also beyond that - the panels give hope of new ways of conceiving architecture: an architecture that is close to our senses, an architecture that is holistic and does not waste, an architecture in Nordic wood that can pave the way to utilizing every single bit of the tree, also all the wood material that is currently considered as

Figure 154-155/ Photos from the Royal Danish Academy workshop

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waste. By thinking and working in more holistic ways, the forests also keep their role in preserving and enriching the planet’s biodiversity.

values embedded and their impact on architecture applied to (waste) wood have been important considerations of the project.

Architecture and building design have a huge role to play as they are the root of the environmental challenges we are facing. They are important as with moving towards more holistic approaches they can also provide solutions to the climate crises.

Through the workshops, the exhibitions, public events and many on-line discussions we had the opportunity of creating a real-time public forum for waste wood value discourse, both between participants, related professions and general public. The oppurtunity of collecting, analysing and understanding the cultural significance and potential value of waste wood in architecture has been valuable to us. It has perhaps created more questions than has provided definite answers. But that was something we expected to some degree. There is a huge inherent complexity that cannot be resolved through one project, such as this, instead it will hopefully be a starting point for many projects by our team and many others to continue and develop further.

The Nordic Waste Wood for Good project has given us an opportunity to rethink the roles of architecture and building design and to present the richness of expression that can be created with what we consider as waste currently. We have worked with wood as we in the Nordic region have the capacity through our building culture, craftsmanship, tacit and current knowledge ledge, digital technologies and skills to lead the way in timber design, architecture and innovation.

Figure 156-157/ Student photos from the Aalto University course. Lahti, Finland.

The collaboration through the project, especially the prolonged timeline has enabled us to get to know each other within the partner group. We have combined our research and practice backgrounds and by embedding the workshops in the teaching curriculum at the four Nordic partner institutions we have planted a seed of inquiry within the student participants.

This has enabled us to question our similarities and clear cultural differences also. What does it mean to be Nordic, the cultural

The team collaboration has strengthened over the time. We have talked together and planned numerous ways of how to continue the collaboration perusing the battle for better, smarter, more holistic utilization of wood through the celebration of its diverse qualities that can create meaningful architecture and extended life cycle that supports environmental agendas.

We hope that the panels and texts presented in this book will be considered as our questioning and re-

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flections to what waste wood may become. They are not yet solutions but may become if we work further with them and can embrace the imperfect wood qualities as material agency and not as defects.

If our book evokes in the reader thoughts about waste wood, material agency, architecture and considerations about how architecture can provide solutions in the CO2 reductions, we will feel that our aims for this project have been achieved. It is a small step in the long journey in combating the climate crisis.

uncertainty and huge world of opportunities that we have a head of us can be a path towards positive change where architecture and (waste) wood can hopefully pave the way for holistic approaches for architecture.

If we think beyond this project, the holistic approach we worked with is not only applicable to wood, albeit wood is best in providing the potential for C02 storage.

The holistic working as a method has potential in providing material resources saving if applied to other materials also. There are many questions to be asked and answers to be searched, not least of how architecture would look like and how we would perceive values, but it is a journey worth perusing, a journey that could provide small steps in our battle for our planet, but also searching to what makes meaningful architecture, how it relates to the material values and traits and how do we – humans see our role in the nature/culture cycles we are part of.

There are many layers to consider, complexities to map, reflect and directions to re-think. There are no certain ways forward and this

Figure 1-2/ Photos from the Royal Danish Academy workshop

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BIOGRAPHIES

OLGA POPOVIC LARSEN Professor

PASI AALTO Centre Director

XAN BROWNE Architect and Phd candidate

Royal Danish Academy, Institute of Architecture and technology

NTNU Wood

Royal Danish Academy, Institute of Architecture and technology

Olga Popovic Larsen is a Professor in Materials and Structures at the Royal Danish Academy. Trained both as an architect and engineer, she has experience from practice, research and teaching with special focus on timber Reciprocal Frames in architecture.

ALISON GRACE MARTIN Weaver

Alison Grace Martin is a weaver and artist.

She has worked extensively with weaving in an architectural context, especially with bamboo.

Pasi Aalto is an Assistant Professor at NTNU, Centre Director of NTNU Wood. Working across a number of scales, his field of study focuses on digital workflows and cross disciplinary studies.

Xan Browne is an architect and industrial PhD candidate. He is currently working on possible structural applications for waste timber at an architectural scale.

ROBERTO CROCETTI Professor

SAARA KANTELE Architect and designer

KTH Stockholm

Aalto University

Roberto Crocetti is a Professor at KTH in Stockholm and a structural engineer. He has extensive experience from industry as a consulting timber engineer working with structural timber applications and detailing as well as timber research projects.

Saara Kantele is an architect and designer based in Helsinki. Her work is focused around the forest and combining knowledge from different fields to create thoughtful and meaningful projects.

BERIT NILSEN Ass. prof and social scientist

MARK HUGHES Professor

HECTOR G. GRØNBORG Industrial and graphic designer

NTNU

Aalto University

Royal Danish Academy, Institute of Architecture and technology

Berit Therese Nilsen is a geographer and Assistant Professor at NTNU. Her work centres around identity, experience, sustainability, and the importance of physical surroundings/place/context.

Mark Hughes is a Professor at Aalto University.

He has great understanding of wood on a material scale and knowledge about building and constructing with wood.

Hector Grundtdal Grønborg is an industrial and graphic designer. He has experience in product design as well as interior architecture.

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