A wooden building was recently opened in a heavily visited tourist area of Helsinki, close to the sea; it is called Katajanokan Laituri (Katajanokka Quay). The newspaper Helsingin Sanomat has published a review of the building, written by architecture critic Mika Savela.
The new Katajanokan Laituri is one of the largest timber-frame buildings in central Helsinki. The building opened to visitors at the end of August this year, and Savela, expressing his satisfaction with it, already regards it as an integral part of the built environment of Helsinki's seafront, comparing it with Stora Enso's previous head office building, nicknamed the "Sugar Cube", which was designed in white marble by the world-famous Finnish architect Alvar Aalto (Alvar Aalto, 1898-1976).
"It is a genuine pleasure to say that Katajanokan Laituri adds to the city's architectural skyline without undue ostentation or showing off," in the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat writes architect and doctor of philosophy Mika Savela.
Hotel and restaurants
The building, which has been erected at the centre of Helsinki's tourist activity, houses a hotel as well as a restaurant, a bar and a café, all of them open and accessible to the public. The building's main tenant is the forest sector company Stora Enso, and the owner is the pension insurance company Varma.
The building's timber frame consists of 7,600 cubic metres of solid wood, mainly spruce. The wooden elements were used in place of emission-intensive steel and concrete, and were manufactured by Stora Enso.
The column-and-beam frame and the load-bearing façade structure are made of laminated veneer lumber (LVL). The load-bearing structures in the shear walls, lift shafts and stairwells, as well as in the intermediate floor and ceiling structures, are made of cross-laminated timber (CLT). A timber frame of this kind is not found anywhere else in the world.
Mika Savela writes that inside the building wood is visible "both in the structural elements and in the finished surfaces: at times rough and industrial, at times smooth...". "Such a varied use of wood in a city-centre building or in public spaces may not yet be all that familiar to us, but it is surprisingly easy to get used to," Savela continues.
Solid wood from Stora Enso
In his review, Mika Savela notes that Stora Enso's industrial solid wood products can be found throughout the building.
"CLT is visible, for example, in the load-bearing walls and the stairs. LVL produced in Varkaus has been used for the columns and the building's façade. Well-defined, large daylight openings lend spatial variety to the multifunctional office spaces and provide plenty of natural light. From what I have heard, the acoustics of the wooden building are a delight to many of those working in it," Savela writes.
Stora Enso's new office building Laituri stands in Katajanokka, in Helsinki's South Harbour, which is Finland's largest passenger port. Every year this harbour, which also receives cruise ships, handles more than six million passengers travelling to and from Stockholm and Tallinn.
According to Savela, Laituri is one of the largest buildings in central Helsinki with a frame made entirely of wood. Another structure on the same scale is the Wood City block in Jätkäsaari, not far from the West Harbour. Wood City is home to the video games company Supercell and the cyber security company WithSecure.
Over its entire service life, Laituri is expected to store up to 5,865 tonnes of carbon dioxide that would otherwise contribute to global warming. According to Stora Enso, this figure corresponds to the average annual emissions of roughly 3,500 cars in Finland. The building's minimum intended service life is one hundred years.
Photograph by Kalle Kouhia (Stora Enso) used for the original article