Structural Construction Component Turns into Astounding Interior

PR66310

ESPOO, Finland, Oct. 27, 2016 /PRNewswire=KYODO JBN/ --

    Office building penthouse got an unexpected outfit of Metsa Wood's Kerto(R)

LVL  

    Designing and constructing the One Main wooden interior in Boston, USA is a

showcase for an untypical use of Kerto(R) LVL (laminated veneer lumber). The

entity of wavy wooden surfaces is built entirely from cross-bonded Kerto LVL

panels that are usually used in structural components.  

    To view the Multimedia News Release, please click:

http://www.multivu.com/players/uk/7965051-metsa-wood-structural-component-interior

    The project's principal architect Mark Goulthorpe from dECOi Architects,

and a professor at nearby MIT, offered a proposal with greatly streamlined

building methodology, where the usual multi-trade, multi-component legacy of

late-industrial production was surpassed in a unitary CAD-CAM logic.

    "One Main makes evident that radically sustainable architecture needn't be

dull, but on the contrary could open up the building industry to remarkable new

formal sophistication," Mark Goulthorpe says.

    Technical advantages and availability led to the choice of Kerto(R) LVL

    Metsa Wood's cross bonded Kerto-Q LVL is typically used as a structural

component. However, the One Main office in Boston is an example of a completely

different use for the product.

    dECOi Architects chose Kerto-Q LVL as building material due to its'

thickness and because it came in big sheets. The material was relatively

inexpensive, relatively gap-free, and there was not a huge wait-time for the

product. It was a pragmatic choice to balance costs, fabrication, and

aesthetics. The greatest benefit for Kerto LVL was that its' raw material is

sustainably grown, and that as a large laminated sheet, it lends itself to

milling that yields a good, strong edge. Given the laminated mass, it can look

extremely seductive.

    Functional wooden ceiling hanging from the roof slab

    The existing office tower was a 1970s concrete slab building with

hermetically sealed windows and full air conditioning. There was plenty of

structural redundancy to hang the quite lightweight ceiling panels from the

roof slab.

    The functional office space is, as it were, "trapped" between two active

surfaces - the floor and ceiling - which are each "animated" by functional

attributes such as vents or light cowlings. The base spatial arrangement is

established by the gathering-up of the floor into a reception desk, or by the

pull of the ceiling down to ground for structure, or up to the sky for light.

    Large prefabricated parts speeded up the assembly

    Every part for the One Main interior was fabricated off-site by a small

mill working company with one powerful 3-axis CNC machine. The design

algorithms divided up the architectural forms into discrete elements that could

be nested onto 12ft x 4ft sheets, and all the nesting was automated and

optimized by the architectural team. The parts were milled with dowel holes so

they could be easily located spatially by the millworkers without requiring

much other than sequencing correctly, alignment and gluing or nailing.

    The goal was to minimize labor on site, and to a large degree this occurred

as larger and larger finished parts were delivered to site - e.g. entire office

floors, or the reception desk shipped as completed elements that were merely

positioned on site.

    Streamlined fabrication brought the flat Kerto LVL sheet to life

    It was imperative to streamline the actual milling process for speed and

economy. All visible elements of the design have been fabricated as stacked

sectional elements cut from flat Kerto LVL sheets.

    The ceilings, walls, floors and static furniture have all been made as

striated ply laminated elements, with functional elements such as ventilation

grilles, light pockets, and door handles formed directly by milling the mass of

wood.

    The architects handed over actual milling files for fabrication, already

nested onto some 1200 Kerto LVL sheets to minimize waste, which were the actual

cutting instructions then issued digitally to the numeric command machine.

    In a material sense, the One Main project assumes a radical environmental

agenda, using a sustainable and carbon-absorbing raw material, translated

efficiently into refined and functional elements via dexterous low-energy

digital tooling. With another choice of material, e.g. if dECOi had reduced the

thickness of the plates from Kerto-Q LVL, or the sheet size, the milling time

and cost would have increased exponentially.

    One Main project in a nutshell:  

    - One Main uses sustainably forested Finnish Kerto-Q LVL with non-toxic

      water-based glue.

    - The 10,000sq ft. (1000m2) project nested onto 1200 sheets of 1.5" thick

      4ft x 12ft.

    - All the parts were milled locally by a single 3-axis milling machine.

    - dECOi provided the actual tooling paths (over 1 million linear feet of  

      cut) in 3D instructional files.

    - Wastage was about 10%, pulped and recycled.

    Experience the One Main office renovation with wooden interior in Boston at

http://www.metsawood.com/publications.

    Images: http://databank.metsagroup.com/l/9SGTHPTV7-xG

    Metsa Wood provides competitive and environmentally friendly wood products

for construction, industrial customers and distributor partners. We manufacture

products from northern wood, a sustainable raw material of premium quality. Our

sales in 2015 were EUR 0.9 billion, and we employ about 2,000 people. Metsa

Wood is part of Metsa Group.  

    For more information, please contact:

    Virpi Koskimies, Communications Specialist, Metsa Wood, mobile:

+358(0)50-4522203, virpi.koskimies@metsagroup.com

    For press information, please contact:

    Matt Trace, Director, Defero Communications, t. +44(0)7828663988

    matt@deferouk.co.uk

         (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161027/433215 )

SOURCE: Metsa Wood