Massive Wood Construction in Finland: Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

Finland has a long history of massive wood construction such that the log construction technique has been used as a traditional method of Finnish residential construction for thousands of years, and the entire history of Finnish architecture is based on this technique. Today, almost all leisure buildings, for example, cottages in Finland are made of wood and mostly log construction. Also, today 90% of Finland’s detached houses have timber frames, and a quarter of them are made from industrial glue logs. Apartment buildings began to be made of wood, especially cross-laminated timber (CLT) and laminated veneer lumber (LVL). The most common way of constructing wooden apartments is to use volumetric elements as compared to load-bearing large elements and post-beam systems. The increase in environmental awareness in Finland, as in many European countries today, strengthens the popularity of wood construction, and this brings the search for innovative and environmentally friendly engineered wood product solutions (e.g., dovetail massive wood board elements) as a future vision. The chapter aims to identify, combine, and consolidate information about massive wood construction in Finland from past, present, and future perspectives. This study will assist and guide Finnish key professionals in the design and implementation of timber buildings.