Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2016 | Page 65

the efficiency of research and development
activities in wood building on the national
level.
Architects, in particular, are quite
interested in wood building at present and
construction companies are warming up to
the theme, as well.
There are various high-profile wood
buildings already in existence – such as the
downtown duo of Kamppi Chapel and Helsinki Music Centre or Finnish Nature Centre Haltia in Nuuksio, Espoo. New, exciting
wood construction projects are also on the
way, including the Centennial Library and
Wood City, both located in Helsinki.
Especially Wood City is noteworthy
in this context, being – upon completion –
the largest wooden quarter of its type in Finland. In this project, SRV and Stora Enso
have joined forces to make Helsinki’s Jätkäsaari area a model of urban wood archi-

tecture by creating an entire city quarter of
wooden buildings.
The partners believe that Wood City
will be a masterpiece of modern wood architecture, raising Finnish know-how in this
area to the highest international level. In
August 2015, Helsinki City authorities gave
a building permit for the “centre piece” of
the project, an 8-storey wooden office building and also a neighbouring 3-storey parking facility.

Reach for the Sky
Still, in terms of trying to impress people
with verticality, eight storeys is not much
of a conversation opener. With this in mind,
a Finnish supplier of wood products Metsä
Wood started a project called Plan B – in
order to really push the envelope on what
wood can do.

Plan B means, in essence, taking legendary architectural designs and figuring
out how to make them out of wood. Having warmed up with the Roman Colosseum,
Metsä Wood wanted to explore what it takes
to build a wooden skyscraper.
Perhaps the most iconic building of the
modern age – the Empire State Building –
was chosen for just this purpose. Architect
Michael Green from MGA contributed his
visionary concept planning to the project –
being of the opinion that the future belongs
to tall wooden buildings, Green was already
more than onboard about the potential and
promise of wood.

House the World
In fact, appearing at a TED conference a few
years back, Green commented that as the
earth grows our food, it will someday also
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