Mass Timber Construction Podcast
Mass Timber Construction Podcast
Special Guest - Jorgen Tycho - Construction Circularity & Design for Disassembly - Mass Timber Projects
Can mass timber really revolutionize the construction industry, even with its initial reputation for being cost-heavy and error-prone? Join us as we uncover the incredible journey of Jorgen Tycho, a creative visionary and pioneer from Oslo, Norway. Discover how he turned these challenges into opportunities by founding OsloTre, an architectural firm that started with their very own CLT factory in 2010. Learn about their comprehensive approach of integrating architectural and engineering expertise, alongside an assembly company, to overcome these hurdles and innovate solutions in fire safety, acoustics, and water management. Witness how Jorgen and his team have made mass timber structures not only viable but economically competitive.
Imagine a world where buildings are designed to be demountable and reusable, significantly reducing climate impact and material waste. In a groundbreaking leap into circular timber building design, Jorgen shares insights into a remarkable project that fulfills this vision. By utilising glulam columns, beams, and CLT floor elements, the project optimises transportation and construction efficiency, cutting emissions and transport costs by an astounding 80%. This promise of sustainable architecture brings simplicity and adaptability to the forefront, challenging traditional building methods and providing a forward-thinking solution to environmental concerns in construction.
Explore the cutting-edge of timber building systems with a focus on innovative materials like dried beech dowels and XFIX dowel tail connectors. These advancements allow for a demountable and reusable building system, minimizing waste and maximizing economic benefits. Hear about a real-world case study involving a four-story, 3,500 square meter building that defies high interest rates with its efficient timeline and prefabricated design. We also touch on the potential of biological architecture, as seen in the Save the Children headquarters in Norway, and the profound impact of biophilic design. Finally, we reflect on the importance of industry collaboration, inviting listeners to join the conversation on circularity and biophilia, continuing beyond the podcast with a personal meeting in Melbourne.
Website: https://www.oslotre.no/
Production by Deeelicious Beats
Music "Game Play" by Quality Quest
Podcast is a Mass Timber Construction Journal Production
www.masstimberconstruction.com
Ladies and gentlemen, we are live. This is the moment you all have been waiting for. It's time for the global sensation, the one, the only the undisputed heavyweight podcast in the world the Mass Timber Construction Podcast. And now here's Paul Kramer, your host.
Speaker 2:Good morning, good afternoon or good evening. Wherever you are in the world today, welcome to the Mass Timber Construction Podcast. This is Paul Kramer, your host, and I have another special guest with me. He's all the way from Norway, from Oslo, and he works in the architectural sphere. I was doing some research for a paper, I was writing, and I came across this amazing project and we're going to talk about it on the podcast. But before we talk about the project specifically, I'd like everybody to meet Jorgen. Jorgen, if you could tell everybody who you are, what your architectural firm is called and how did you find out about Mass Timber and get into this sector?
Speaker 3:Thank you, thanks for having me, paul. Yes, so my name is Jorgen Tykko. I am working as a creative director in an architect and construction technology firm that's called Oslo 3, translating Oslo Wood, so we are a firm dedicated to timber constructions. We actually have the offspring. Our offspring is a CLT factory, a mass timber factory that I started in 2010.
Speaker 3:This was quite early mass timber in Norway. It was 0.1 version of mass timber. It was quite narrow and had the reputation at that time it had the reputation of being very expensive and with a lot of errors, and so what we did when we started this factory was to also start architect and engineer branch to learn how to design with material, and we also started an assembly company so we could learn how to assemble the product. So in this way, we had quite a steep learning curve for five years, and then, in 2015, we sold the factory. It was outdated and the next generation CLT elements had started arriving, so we sold the factory, but we kept the architect and engineer part and renamed it Oslo 3.
Speaker 3:And then we also kept assembling quite a lot of timber structures, which we have now separated into a different company that is called Oslo Pre, oslo Prefab. So we're still working on both sides of production, but mainly now, since 2015, we have I've been working as the creative director in Oslo 3 and been focusing on developing timber structures that are both economically possible to realize, because it has been a very expensive way of building, expensive way of building. We have now solved the issues with fire, with acoustics, with water, meaning that we are now designing timber buildings in in all different building typologies that are competitive with steel and concrete structures and and even now we are actually designing structures that are are cheaper to build, which which is quite a big change. So interesting times ahead.
Speaker 2:And if we can go back to 2010 and your manufacturing plant, how wide were the panels or the billets that you were producing back then, Jorgen?
Speaker 3:One meter and 20. Yeah, yeah, and then we didn't have a finger mill so we could only produce five and a half meter long elements, so we were a bit constricted in this.
Speaker 2:And did you have a mechanical press that you produced, or did you use a vacuum?
Speaker 3:press. No, we had a mechanical press. It was a hand-built press. It was one of the first press built for CLT in the Nordics. It was two of these presses. It was the one we had and it was the one Mark Son in the north of Sweden had so built. It was quite the old school system. But we had a very, very cool CNC mill that we got. It was actually the CNC mill that built the opera house and also the interior of the opera house. It was designed to make wooden ships, wooden boats, and so it was a nine-axis CNC so it could make a round ball of timber, which was quite good stuff. Yes, well, not very proper for CLT, but actually it wasn't the fastest machine.
Speaker 2:I thought you were going to say that the CNC was so advanced. It was actually hand power tools and Japanese saws, which is actually no joke. What we actually had when we established X-LAM in New Zealand and before the CNC bridge came from Wyman, they were using power tools and Japanese cutting saws to make the panels.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we also made a lot of handmade solutions and also the design at that time. You know it was the BIM modeling that the 3d modeling was not as advanced, so we had to draw every element. We have to have to draw in 2d from five different sides and then plot it into the cnc, so it was very, very time consuming and and what was the software package that you did that with?
Speaker 3:was that like an autodesk autocad thing, or yeah, yeah, yeah so we did it in archicad and then, and then we um translated it into some cam language I don't remember which which program and what adhesive did you use, jorgen, for the panels that you were.
Speaker 3:We used MBUF, so amylamine, urea, formaldehyde, so it needed to be heated up and pressed. This is actually quite interesting because that's the glue you use in blue lamb and it also early CLT was the glue that was the favorite glue. Then it was removed from the market for a while because of the formaldehyde, but now it's actually back again. So it's in most new producers at least in Scandinavia, they use MUF because it has better fire properties.
Speaker 2:Yes, and when you talk about the char fall-off in the fire testing, the MUF has a greater resistance for that under testing and under loads, compared to the traditional HBS or HBX that's on the market at the moment. So it's that sort of equilibrium of sustainability in the environmental sense or sustainability of human life in the building sense. It's this dynamic right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, of course, and so I mean we did a lot of research into this with glue and the amounts of glue used. They're so small, know, so it's it's very, very uh little compared to other products. Um, but what's very interesting now is this uh lignin based glues that are coming here, like the neo ligno from from student so, and I think this this will revolutionize the whole, the whole way of uh producing timber. It will be a hundred percent biological element brilliant.
Speaker 2:Let's move to the project that I mentioned at the top of the introduction and, as I just recap, I was doing some research and anyone that knows me will know I publish, uh you know, many articles in a month and across a year on projects that are produced, and your firm was producing a particular building that had great circularity principles embedded into it, and I'm going to pronounce the name as carefully as I can and you tell me if I get it right Hasletra, is that correct? It's quite close, paul, is that correct?
Speaker 3:It's quite close, paul Hasletræ. Hasletræ is a region of Oslo, outskirts of central Oslo, new urban development. It used to be an area for production and it's now redeveloped to living area. So the building it's the third and last building, completing a square in this like a main square in this new urbanization, and that's the reason it's called Hafnetre, because it's the building number three. But it's also made of wood and in Norwegian træ it translates to wood.
Speaker 3:So our client there they are actually an old shipping company but that has turned into a real estate developer um, and they are, they have, um, they came to us and and we've been trying to design some buildings for them before, but it never, never kind of happened, uh, and then they came. Okay, we have this last building. We want this to be like the final building in this development and we want it to be a special building. We also want it to be a building that is demountable and reusable and that explores the possibilities of timber construction. So it was quite a cool assignment, I must say, and we really went head in to this. I mean, this was our dream building. We've been dreaming of this task for 12 years. So what we started looking at is basically this circularity and, and, if you see, of the life expected lifespan of a building. It's the production of the building materials, it's, it's the, it's the largest source of, of climate gas emissions and and, of course, material use. But we see also in office buildings that you have a change of tenants every 5, 10, 15 years. And then these tenants, they want to have a complete new plant solution. They want new furniture, new surfaces and all these materials. They are then just torn out of the building. They're very difficult to reuse, so most of them are dug down or burnt. Only nine, about nine percent are going back to a circular economy and then new materials are produced to to make new plans, and this goes on. For then the life expectancy of the building. Here in Norway we say life expectancy of 60 years, which is ridiculously low, but that's what you calculate. Then all this kind of new production of new interior installations, they um surpass the, the, the climate gas emissions of of the building when it was actually built in the first time. So it's actually almost double double that. So so you actually build the building three times during your life during the um, uh, 60 years. When you look at the climate gas emissions and the material use, which is ridiculous, you know, and we cannot keep on this linear thinking in architecture.
Speaker 3:So this was our starting point. And then we wanted to build a 100% biological building. We wanted to use only biological, regenerative materials that you can plant and replant and that you can plan for. You can plan for the carbon cyclists of these materials in a whole different way than what you can do with fossil materials, of these materials, in a whole different way than what you can do with fossil materials. So the building is, from ground and up, it's a complete timber building. So all the carrying constructions, the isolating components and the protective components are all made of timber or other biological materials. And then we had the concept of how can this kind of be demountable and reusable? So we don't know. I mean, obviously this building will stand for more than six years, it will probably stand for a couple of hundred years, and we don't know how the secondhand market is for reused timber in 200 years. So for this building to be a material bank for the future, we designed it in a way that keeps the materials as close to the raw factory size as possible, with as little perforations and carvings in the material. So this then started us to think okay, how is this building going to be produced? Okay, we have to choose a construction system.
Speaker 3:We chose to build it with the glulam column and beams and then with CLT elements as floors. And the CLT elements the master element you produce in the CLT factory is 3 meters by 15 meters. In this way, you produce in the CLT factories three meters by 15 meters. In this way, you can use the whole master element without any cutoffs, so you don't get any material spill. So we designed a grid that was five by five meters, 50 meters long, meaning we could use these master elements and also on a semi trailer. The flat open plan is the max you can have on. This is 3 by 15 meters. So this adds up, meaning that you could fill up the semi with completely with timber and and timber has only one fifth of the weight of of reinforced concrete. Meaning that we could transport five times as much timber on one lorry than than with concrete. Meaning that we could transport five times as much timber on one lorry than than with concrete. Meaning that we have a reduction in transport cost and and emissions in with 80 percent. And also when you then come to the building site, you come with large elements and you build fast.
Speaker 3:So with this as a as a starting, we then started to look okay, how can we design the glulam beams and columns? We don't want to perforate them with technical appliances, so we can't deliver them towards the middle of the building, making a space in the center, and in this way we could take all the technical appliances in the center, meaning that we also enhanced the design phase because the engineer did not have to be involved in the whole process of designing the technical system. Meaning that we could design the building much faster than what we have had usually been doing with the timber buildings when we were perforating the beams because they are so, so what you say? So so you don't want to perforate the blue and beams, basically because it reduces the strength of the beam. We then also used a two-way span of a CLT element so we could span over this gap of 1.6 meters, meaning that we had a very, very clean and simple primary construction system. Then, on top of this, we replaced a data floor, so a hollow core floor, and then could have free distribution of electrical appliances in the floor, meaning that also for future plant solutions. We had a very, very, um uh like open, simple system, um, so, and all this was standing on gravity, uh. So basically, so when you want to dismantle it, you just lift it up, so it's not nothing is glued together or or foam together or or all these kind of uh industrial processes that that's being used to null it.
Speaker 3:And then we started looking at okay, so we have to connect this building. Also, we want to look at possibility to reduce the use of steel in the building. I mean, steel has quite high climate gas emission because you use a lot of energy to produce it and it's also a scarce resource. It will never be more steel on the planet than what it's now and we're going to be 2 billion people more in 25 years. So we need to kind of start looking at our resources.
Speaker 3:So we looked into traditional timber-to-timber techniques that we know from, as you mentioned, japanese joinery, but also from Scandinavian wood logs and state churches and these old building technologies and how we could industrialize this, because I mean, we're redesigning everything as a digital twin in the BIM, when we can design down to under millimeter precision. The machine talks to the machine. So we were quite certain that it would be possible to design very precise timber locks into the buildings. So we then developed a lot of mockups. I mean, our sister company, oslo Prea, is full of carpenters, so they made quite a lot of mockups for us that we could test different techniques, and this was also designed during COVID. So it was a complete close down in Norway, and so the whole design process was virtual. You know, it was done on video. So we had to also convince the client and the builder that this was possible. So we had to make these mock-ups. We made videos of the carpenters knocking in the different deluxe and sent it over. So it was a complete process.
Speaker 3:And this was maybe the most interesting building technique process in this project, because it became very apparent how conservative the building industry is. It takes quite a lot of convincing to change from one system to another and to change to okay, we're not going to use steel, we're not going to use screws. That's crazy, that's why. But then if you look at it again, you know, if you look only a hundred years back, you didn't use this amount of steel and screws, you know. So it's quite a relatively new invention in a way. So we might manage to convince them to go for this.
Speaker 3:So, basically, what we're using, we're using for the glulam connections. We're using dowels made of beets that are dried down to 6% wood moisture. They are then knocked into the glulam that holds 12% wood moisture and it then absorbs the moisture from the glue lamb, it expands and then locks the construction. So it's quite a well-known principle. But the difference is that we now can do it industrially and we see the speed of installing this system it's so much faster than if you work with a steel system and also the cost of this, you know, to two beach dowels compared to a huge steel uh joint. So we saw both a reduction in price but also a massive reduction in building speed. So uh, not reduction, but uh, but faster. And uh.
Speaker 3:Then for the um, this large CLT elements, both for the floors and the walls, we are using XFIX dowel tail connectors. Basically it's a form of dowel tail that we know from the furniture industry, just a bit larger. So it's plywood made of beach and then this is only knocked down into the construction. It's also demountable. You can just drag it up as a cork. So so this is basically the building system. So it's a very, very simple building system very fast to build. We reduced the speed of building this with down to 25% of what you will build a steel and concrete system. So the whole primary and secondary construction.
Speaker 3:It was raised in only four and a half weeks for guys. And then it came the wall elements that are prefabricated timber walls, isolated with wood fiber, no plastics in them. They're dynamic and breathing and open. The walls came, they were hung on. It took two days, and then at the same time they were putting on the membrane on the roof, meaning that we had a completely sealed building in five weeks. It was completely sealed both horizontally and vertically, which is pretty cool, and then the whole the rest of the building. It took from the first timber element until we started the technical uh system. It took six months, which is it's crazy. It's so fast and in these times when we have very high interest rates on loans, for a builder and for a developer to build this fast, it's a very, very large economical gain. Yeah, so this we see as a very interesting point for for future timber buildings. Now, um and um. Well, should I just continue, or?
Speaker 2:yeah, no, I just have one question to ask. Just give the audience a bit of an understanding about how big this building is, um, because someone might say, oh, hang on, you know it's the size of a small house, but how big? How many floors? How big was the building, jorgen?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, it's a relatively small building. It's a four-story 3,500 square meter building. Not that small. No, it's a medium size.
Speaker 1:It depends on where you are.
Speaker 3:I mean, you're in Melbourne, so for you guys it's probably small, for in norwegian scale it's medium size, um, but uh, um yeah. So this was kind of okay. Now we had very, very good solutions for the constructive system and then we started to look at, and then we started to look at the interior and and and what. How are we going to solve this, both as a demountable and reusable structure, but also how can we introduce all this kind of concept of biology and biophilia and all this in into the building that we've, you know, been working like partly within every project, but never kind of fully integrated in one building, um, so we started to look at uh, first of all, this is a hundred percent digitally produced building. It's a hundred percent prefab building, and this is very important because it cannot be partly prefab, partly place place, but it needs to be 100 prefab, partly place-based. It needs to be 100% prefab to make this work, but meaning that everything is thought out before you start building. So you have very little material cut off, very little loss, but you also build much faster when you're installing appliances and all this. You can also really, really work on technical appliances and and work on reducing um ventilation systems and and so forth. So we we looked at this together with the engineers, and and we also looked at a lot of how much we used materials can be used in this building from from other building sites. So so we had the ventilation aggregates they are reused um, and also a lot of the kind of um bathroom appliances and then some secondary surfaces and so forth are reused materials from from um from buildings that are torn down. We also have the whole acoustic system. Is is made up of reused acoustic ceilings and that we were actually paid for coming to the destruction site and recover, and then for all the new materials we are using.
Speaker 3:Obviously, I mean obviously we're exposing all the clt and and the glulam, but but for the other surfaces we are working on um, well, in the exterior we are using wood shingles uh, that we know from from from the roof of our stave churches and and and we know it's a very long, lasting way of building. Yeah, um, these we had pre-made in a location, so they came as elements and were just hang on to the structure. The very nice thing about these are they get this kind of I mean, untreated timber exposed to weather will always turn gray, and it turns gray in a somewhat kind of dirty way. It doesn't always look so nice, so, but the difference is, when we were using the shingles, that every shingle will have a different pattern, and in this way it will look more like a, like a brick facade, and the the rest of the buildings in this area are made with the brick facade, so this is actually like a timber brick facade and it's um, uh, it, just as it gets older and weathered, it looks more and more like brick, which is it's, it's very, it's very nice how it kind of merges in.
Speaker 3:I mean last centuries, um building material. Now, only with this centuries building material anyway, it looks good.
Speaker 2:I like the shingles. Um, when I saw the designs and I thought, oh, that's going to naturally gray and you're right, has this sort of textural pattern to it and it complements the surroundings it. It is going to absolutely blend in with the built environment. I think it's a very clever choice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's been a great success and we see now the building has been standing for some time and we see it's really the theory is working, so it's starting to really weather nice. Then also, for the windows, we are using wooden windows and these windows are also possible to open, which we think is a very good quality. And in a timber building or in an office building most new office buildings you are not able to open the window because they're so technical. They're so, yeah, like advanced in a way, but they're not advanced. They're the opposites really, because they are not using the climate, they're not using the material properties, they're only dependent on mechanical installations, um, meaning that we, we are, um, I mean the mechanical installations. They stand for about 30 percent of building costs, they stand for 90 percent of of the running cost of a building when it's operative, operational cost, and it stands for about 20 percent of the climate gas emission. So this is a very, very interesting thing to start working on. Can we reduce the need of mechanical installations and can we start opening the windows? I mean simplifying architecture by changing the material, and this we can do because now we are starting to look at the interior. In the interior we are having only biological components. So we're using cork as part of the acoustic system. We're also then using ash veneer as part of the walls.
Speaker 3:We were actually going to use birch veneer, but then, just as we were supposed to when we were starting to build, then the war in Ukraine started and suddenly, for the whole of the European timber market, they understood that 95% of all birch in Europe comes from Russia. So in two weeks, the whole birch market in Europe was completely vacuumed. It was empty. So we had a big issue because we had an entrepreneur that needed to build this fast. They had a clock ticking and they had a date issue, because we had an entrepreneur that needed to build this fast. They had a clock ticking and they had a date for delivery and they told us okay, if we cannot get any timber veneer, this will be a gypsum surface. So you have one week to figure this out.
Speaker 2:What did you do?
Speaker 3:We took a lot of phone calls and thankfully we found this very old family-run Vynair factory close to Oslo that by chance had the amount of Ash Vynair on storage. They had this on storage for years and it was the exact amount we needed. So it was a last minute call. But so the Ash Venaire is very nice. It's a bit green in the beginning so we decided we don't want to treat it, we leave it untreated. It's so hard. You know, ash is a very hard timber and it has now gone more kind of golden with time so it's now adapting very, very nice with spruce CLT. This veneer is very hard, meaning that it will last for hundreds of years if you treat it right. Yeah, meaning that it will also probably have quite a high second-hand value on on a second second-hand market. So we decided then this will be connected with um with uh wooden nails. So we're using beach nails from, from lignolok. These nails they are coated with uh, with the lignin, like the, the, the glue, the, the natural timber glue, and then they are shot in with a nail gun and due to friction and speed, then the lignin is melting. So it's melting and connecting to the surface behind keeping holding this together. But then also, when this is going to be dismantled sometime in the future, you can kind of just pull out the complete element and this can be sent to a future secondhand mill. And for this guy who is running this secondhand mill, if he knows that there's no steel in this timber, then he can run it through his or hers machines without worrying. But if you don't know, if you think it's some steel, then you have to check all the elements. You have to take out the steel because this will destroy the machinery. So in a way we need to. When we're designing demountable buildings for the future, we also need to kind of start thinking how is this industry going to look, how is the production chain for for secondhand materials in in the future, which is quite interesting to start looking at because it's a. It gives another kind of knowledge and importance to the material choice.
Speaker 3:So meaning that all the surfaces, all the walls and ceilings, they are made of timber materials and ceilings they are made of timber materials. These we treat with a diffusion open beeswax oil. So it's also a product, meaning that the timber can still breathe and the pores are open and we can start to look at the hygroscopic and diffusion open and hygrothermic properties of timber. So these are, you know, hygroscopic means that the timber will always try to adapt to the relative air moisture in the room. So if you put timber in a room and it's very moist in that room, the timber will absorb this moisture. And if it's very dry in the room, as it is in the Norwegian winter when you're really heating up the building, then it will release moisture, meaning that you can use this moisture in a way to kind of work with ventilation and humidity in the room in a whole different way that you can do with mechanical installations alone, with ventilation and humidity in the room in a whole different way than you can do with mechanical installations alone. So it's a much more adaptable and faster way of changing the indoor environment.
Speaker 3:And timber also has what is called hydrothermic properties. That means it's basically the sauna effect. What is called hydrothermic properties? That means it's basically the sauna effect. So basically, when you throw water on a sauna, it evaporates due to the heat. But the water also catches heat from the timber. So basically the timber works as a passive heat battery and when you add moist, this heat is transported to the moist.
Speaker 3:It's done quite a lot of studies in Norway on this, on timber bathrooms, where you actually see that timber bathrooms they get heated two degrees higher after a shower than tiled bathrooms and this is due to this hygrothermic effect. So what we see in timber buildings is actually that this is kind of possible to integrate as part of the heating system, meaning that you use less electricity and you also feel the indoor environment. It's experienced as much more warm and adaptable than all these mineral and synthetic environments that we build nowadays. So especially women say that this is very much better, because today buildings are not designed for the female body. It's designed for the male body, aged 45 or something. So it's a difference here. So we see that these buildings are much more adaptable to the human body, much more adaptable because they are biological. And then on the floor we introduced a goat's head carpet. It sounds very exclusive. It's really not.
Speaker 3:It's industrially made and it's not more expensive than a 100% plastic carpet, which is today's industry standard. But the big difference is that this plastic carpet, it will always have emissions. It will have this VOC emissions of volatile compounds that you really don't want to inhale, and we see that in the human body. Since the 60s, you could track about seven to nine environmental toxins or pollutants in the human body. Now we track two to three hundred. So it's a very, very big change, at least in I don't know how it's in Melbourne, but in Scandinavia we live, the average person lives indoors 85% of his or her life, meaning that we are more or less always indoors, and this goes for most people, because I mean you sleep for eight hours and you're probably at work at some office which has this exact same environment. It's gypsum walls, plastic, mechanical installations, uh, artificial light, um. So we, our bodies, are starting to get more and more adapted to this very synthetic environment which is very, very far from our natural habitat. You know, and this, I believe this, this, this has effect on us, on on both health, like, like physical health, but also mental health. So so this is, um, this is very interesting to to to, to to look at solutions, and the cool thing about gold here is that, well, gold here and wool they have also also these hygroscopic properties that we were talking about of timber, but gold here is also made of keratin, and keratin actually has the capacity of encapsulating VOCs, so it's actually trapping these poison gases and demolishing them, meaning that the goat hair carpet is the complete opposite of the plastic carpet. The goat hair carpet is part of the air cleaning system in the building, so you actually get a cleaner indoor environment by introducing this. So this means that we now have developed a hundred percent biological interior, so all walls and ceilings of timber and on the floor, of wool, wool and and and hair.
Speaker 3:Wow this again, then. It's incredible because this gives the room some very, very interesting aspects is, first of all, you can start to open the windows because you you can let air in and then you take the used air you take out from a central system and you can reuse the heater. But because we also because we're using timber as a thermic and hydrothermic element, this will keep the heat in the building even if you open the window, and meaning that it's on the individual level, the occupants of the building they feel much better, kind of, because they can individually choose if they want it cold or warm. They can individually choose if they want it cold or warm, and this is only possible to do if you use biological, hydroscopic materials in the interior. And when you come into this space, it's incredible.
Speaker 3:It's like it's so. It feels so soft, it feels so warm, but not in like a disturbing heat. The warm it feels like comfortable warm. The acoustics are fantastic and it's. It's just like the room itself. It's embracing you, giving you a huge hug. You feel so comfortable and safe. And what's cool is that we designed this building for the Save the Children organization in Norway and it's now their headquarters and they are working with some pretty heavy material. It's devastating work. What they say is that after they moved into this building, a whole different calm has laid over the organization. They are much calmer, they feel much safer, they even feel more productive. You know it's, it's, it's, and I believe this, it's a potential in this new timber architecture, this new biological architecture, that we can actually make better buildings, we can make better spaces than what we have done in the in the last, in the last 100 years. We can actually add a different level, a new level to architecture which is super fascinating.
Speaker 2:That's incredible and what a really lovely purpose for being in the building and for the building to support that really important work that's obviously being done to save the children. I have two questions which I have burning in my brain. I did an international survey recently and somebody said to me in that survey dismantling a building is a myth, it will never happen, it's going to cost a fortune. You know people aren't able to achieve this and I had other people saying yes, I think it's possible. And you know we just need some examples in the architectural construction built environment sphere. Well, you are representing that example. When you designed this building, did it take you any longer to design it for dismantling and working with the CLT manufacturers not to penetrate the billets or the largest panels that you could create, and then the dovetails and then you have the dowel lamination systems coming together? Did any of that take much longer than a normal build?
Speaker 3:well, yes and no, um, basically the design phase was no longer than than, uh, than we used to. It was actually shorter because we were so short on time in this project. So at least the detailed design phase was quite short, but the pre-phase was longer and this was basically quite a bit out of luck, also because of the COVID. So the project kind of started and stopped all the time because it was so much uncertainty, meaning that we had longer time to think. But well, I mean, when you design in BIM, you design a complete digital twin, so this you do anyway.
Speaker 3:When you work with prefab architecture, meaning that you have to design down to millimeter all solutions, um, so, so the actual design phase was not longer. And and then also for the mounting, we just can just reverse the b model and you have a demand um the amount of the mounting script, um, but for the timber locks, obviously it took, took us longer time because we hadn't done it before. So we had to do all these prototypes and testing. But now we see, on new buildings we're working on now this we just only introduced and we see it's a cost reducing solution and it's a faster way of building. So, yeah, the first building took some more time to design all these solutions.
Speaker 2:But if you get that intelligence together right, you can package it up and use it on the next building and I would see a future where we could get people like your firm to share that intelligence, like your firm to share that intelligence, and, by creating this knowledge bank, to try and build a community of people who think similar to you and I on this podcast and want to reimagine a different way moving forward. This could help accelerate and enable the future right.
Speaker 3:Definitely. I mean, we are completely open source on on everything we do, um, and and happily share our, uh, our knowledge, and. But I also think that we are, um, quite lucky in the way of, at least in europe, we are, we are seeing this uh, this change, this new european Bauhaus, this movement to to make europe the first climate neutral continent, and, and this was introduced as now, what is now in this taxonomy? It's one part, that is, reuse and design for reuse. I think design for reuse will become law, so it will not be possible to avoid this because we are scar, it's, it's a scarcity in, in resources we are, we are, we are so many people on earth now that that we cannot work in this linear fashion that we have been doing, uh until now.
Speaker 3:You know, we, we have, uh, we have a three tripled the the use of or of materials from the earth since 1970. And it's expected in 2060, it's expected that we will double the material, have the need of double the material we use today. And when this is not recycled, I mean on a global scale, 9% of all materials are recycled, so meaning that 91% of all materials are used only one time and then they are dug down in the ground or burnt, you know, virgin material, and this has taken its toll on our planet. We are now. You know, the wild animals have decreased on average with 73% since the 70s. Half of the Earth's rainforests have disappeared in 100 years.
Speaker 3:It's crazy times we are. In only 125 years, we have completely destroyed large parts of the planet, and a lot of the reason of this is the building industry, because this is kind of the industry that is digging stuff out of the ground and cutting down stuff. So we don't have a choice really. As I see it, we need to think circularity and we need to think regenerative materials. We need to be able to kind of plant and harvest our materials. We can use this kind of linear linkage. So so this this will force its way through. We don't have a choice, I think well.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for sharing um of the project. Uh, how can people get in contact with you to ask about projects that they might want to get you involved in? What's the best way to contact you?
Speaker 3:um, the best way is to send an email. You can go to our web page, which is oslo3.no or com and just find me there and send a mail or give me a call. We're also on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn and all these platforms, so it's also possible to contact us there. We also update quite a lot on our projects. To contact us there. We also update quite a lot of our on our projects.
Speaker 3:Um, and we we are uh, we are now trying to because we've been working with this for so many years now, so we have gained quite a lot of knowledge and experience and we're trying to reach out and and work a bit more internationally than what we have been doing before. We've actually been working quite a lot in Australia during COVID. So we worked with Tasmanian CLT producer there, cusp, we were helping them designing elements and we also worked on the Atlassian that's been built in Sydney. Now we worked for the entrepreneur for built. We worked in the tender phase.
Speaker 3:We were looking at the logistics and how will a timber building inside a steel and glass building actually work? How will the climate be? How will the timber that's exposed to quite a harsh climate adapt to this? And we've been also doing some designs of some buildings in Melbourne. So we're trying to see I mean, it's so easy now the days we are now to work digital so you can completely design a building from from, from the opposite side of the planet. You don't have to travel, travel down to do it. So it's um, yeah, so we're trying to build a network and and then the people to cooperate with uh, across that that are kind of like-minded businesses that want to to make a change in the building industry. It's some high time that we go away from last century's way of building and turn into this century and a new way of thinking and a new way of building.
Speaker 2:Well, the podcast goes out globally. Our biggest audience is in the US, then the second biggest audience is European audience and the remainder of the world, including Asia Pacific. So your name will get out there from this podcast and I'll put the website address in the show notes for the episode as well to really make sure that there's that connection, because I believe that the only way we're going to really make a difference is if we start to communicate, connect. Take the best of research and the best intelligence and try and apply it to the building industry, the construction industry, to the built environment. You have been very generous with your time, with your knowledge and with your sharing some amazing and important elements. I think I'm going to have to get you back for another episode to talk about circularity and biophilia and all those things that have connected us together. Um, you know, in the recent times, and of course, when you come to australia, you must come to melbourne and we must catch up for a coffee and uh and continue the conversation without the microphone.
Speaker 3:Fantastic, paul Great. It was a pleasure to be here and, yeah, I really enjoy your podcast and looking forward to more episodes there. So, yeah, great, looking forward to meet you in person one day.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thank you.