Urbanize through the woods

The competition launched by Metsä Wood, the wood producer for building, has encouraged all architects around the world to design the wood extensions in major urban centers. The winning designs were those dedicated for New York, Shanghai and Tampere (Finland).

The architects from 40 countries have suggested a number of innovative wood solutions to confront urbanization problems. Their mission was to design a wood extension to an existing urban building. The proposals involved 69 cities around the world including Sydney, Shanghai, New York, Berlin, Paris and London.

"The construction of the wood extensions in existing urban environments could be an important solution to the challenge of urbanization. Instead of demolishing the existing communities, we could improve," said Mike Kane, senior architect and professor in the University of London South Bank. "This competition must be seen as a catalyst for future debate around the sustainability and the evolution of the cities in the world." "Urbanization has brought an increasing interest in the wood construction base. The potential of wood extension is very huge -. It affects more than 100 million square meters in Germany alone," said Mikko Saavalainen, VPS Support Business Development at Metsä Wood.

The winners were awarded in two categories: small-scale interventions and large-scale interventions. The total value of the prizes awarded was € 35,000. The winners of the 1st prize in the first category are Nile Greenberg (USA) for his concept for New York studio and Alma (Spain) for its concept for Shanghai. In second place, we found the Superspace Agencies (Turkey) with a concept for Istanbul and Sigurd Larsen Design & Architecture (Germany) with a concept for Berlin.

In the second category, the jury has crowned Lisa Voigtländer (Germany) and SungBok Song (Korea) for their concept for Tampere (Finland). In second place were selected the Basic Architects agencies (Australia) with a concept for Perth, L Arkkitehdit (Finland) with a concept for Helsinki and Giuseppe De Marinis Gallo and Gianluca Gnisci (Italy) with a concept for New York and Kim Min Jae Architects (Hong Kong) with a concept for Hong Kong.