Research project on timber construction receives award
01.06.2011
The TES Energy Facade timber construction research project was announced winner of the Deutscher Holzbaupreis 2011 award on Tuesday 31 May 2011. The project carried out jointly by Aalto University, the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) took first place in the “Komponenten / Konzepte” category.
TES Energy Facade, a part of the WoodWisdom-Net research programme, was a multilateral project in which researchers from the Departments of Architecture, Surveying, Energy Technology and Forest Product Technology took part.
The project, which ran from 2008 to 2010, investigated a repair and reconstruction method for the facade elements of old buildings based on the use of timber-frame elements; the aim was to improve energy efficiency to the point that it reached the Passivhaus standard. The objective of the project was to find solutions that could be applied throughout Europe.
The Deutscher Holzbaupreis 2011 award was presented in Hannover, Germany on 31 May during the LIGNA 2011 trade show.
TEKES, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, provided principal financing for the Finnish portion of the research project. The Housing Finance and Development Centre of Finland (ARA), NCC Construction, Stora Enso Oyj, Puuinfo Oy, Woodpolis and The Finnish Real Estate Federation were project partners.
“Receiving this award is a great honour as competition in this field is very intense in Germany. The project investigated a pioneering model for industrial scale reconstruction based on timber-frames. During the course of this project, two sample buildings were completed of which one achieved the energy efficiency of the Passivhaus standard and the other reached a satisfactory level of energy efficiency,” said Project Coordinator Yrsa Cronhjort, Chair for Wood Construction at Aalto University’s Department of Architecture.
The TES Energy Facade project has previously received the Forest Technology Platform Team-Up Award, in November of 2009, and the award for project with the best industrial involvement and relevance at the WoodWisdom-Net Best Project Awards 2011, in February of this year.
Further Information:
Coordinator Yrsa Cronhjort, yrsa.cronhjort(at)aalto.fi
Professor Pekka Heikkinen, pekka.heikkinen(at)tkk.fi, Tel. +358 05 517 4727
Deutscher Holzbaupreis, http://www.deutscher-holzbaupreis.de/
