After four years flanking Finlandia Hall — the Alvar Aalto masterpiece nominated for UNESCO World Heritage listing — the 2,000-square-metre wooden pavilion known as Little Finlandia is being dismantled, trucked out and reassembled at a new location. That is according to Jyrki Uimonen, Sales Development Manager for Kerto LVL at Metsä Wood, who yesterday revealed that crews had begun unbolting the structure on the shores of Töölönlahti.
Designed from the outset for disassembly and reuse, Little Finlandia was a joint project of the City of Helsinki, Finlandia Hall, Aalto University and Finnish modular constructor FM-Haus — a family-owned Jokioinen company that has worked alongside Metsä Wood for more than 20 years.
Its load-bearing modules combine Kerto-S beams, Kerto-Q panels and Kerto Kate thin panels, whilst floors and roofs drew on Metsä Wood’s Kerto-Ripa ribbed-slab technology — a system that cuts raw material consumption in ground-floor walls by up to 50 per cent against comparable solid timber structures.
FM-Haus prefabricated all modules at its element factory in Jokioinen, 120 kilometres north of Helsinki, before craning them into position — cutting on-site construction time to a third of a conventional build, according to FM-Haus Managing Director Juhani Sjöman. Metsä Wood Sales Manager Lassi Moisio said the Kerto LVL was chosen because durable, premium-quality materials were the only guarantee a building could survive transport and reassembly intact.
“The elements, made of Kerto LVL products, ensure a long-lived building that withstands heavy use,” Moisio said, before adding that the carbon storage locked into the structure’s LVL alone amounts to 484.5 tonnes of CO2 equivalent — material that, under a conventional demolish-and-landfill scenario, would be permanently lost to landfill decomposition.
Helsinki city has flagged the reassembled structure for use as temporary facilities for schools, childcare centres or other renewal projects, with no destination yet confirmed publicly. The building’s Kerto LVL structures carry a 60-minute fire resistance rating across three compartments, with dampers rated to 30 minutes.
- To learn more about how European manufacturers like Metsa Wood are looking to engineer LVL with precision, click here for Wood Central’s special feature from earlier this month.
