Technical systems in the Living Lab allow the adjustment of ventilation, lighting, temperature and humidity in the test conditions related to living.
and the Finnish Environment Institute have calculated that if 80 per cent of new residential buildings in Europe were constructed from wood, and if wood was used in their structures, cladding, surfaces and furnishings, the buildings would sequester 55 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. More than 600 cubic metres of wood have been used for the new buildings at Hyytiälä. Assuming that one cubic metre of wood stores 0.75 tonnes of carbon dioxide, the buildings store approximately 450 tonnes of it. * This is equivalent to annual CO2 emissions of 250 internal combustion engine cars, each driven 20,000 kilometres.
Research centre for the entire value chain
The new buildings at Hyytiälä Forestry Field Station are part of a global network of wooden Living Lab buildings, established in 2022. It includes the Peavy Hall teaching and laboratory facilities in Oregon in the United States, and the office and laboratory facilities of the InnoRenew CoE institute in Slovenia. Each laboratory measures some of the same variables to produce long time series data, which will increase our understanding of the characteristics, changes, and sustainability of CLT buildings in different climates. Hyytiälä’s SMEAR II station for atmospheric research offers an additional dimension to the study. It has been used since the 1990s to collect data on gas exchange and gas composition in the atmosphere, growing forests and soil. SMEAR data helps researchers link climate impacts to wood material and construction as a whole. “We hope to develop Hyytiälä into a research and innovation centre that covers the entire forest value chain, where companies can also do testing and research,” says Toivonen. At Hyytiälä campus, sensors in the wooden elements will continue to collect data hour after hour, day after day. Research based on the data has already begun. The first results are becoming available in late 2023 and in 2024.
* Source: University of Helsinki
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