Denmark’s Dome of Visions Constructed With Sustainable Wood

The 2017 European Capital of Culture is Aarhus, Denmark, and to celebrate the event, the city has erected a municipal pavilion in support of building culture. The pavilion has been named the Dome of Visions 3.0 and was constructed with sustainable Kerto LVL beams from MetsaWood. It will serve to not only provide “inspiration for new ways of building and living” but also act as a community hall for conferences on the future of sustainable cities.

The dome is the third installment in a series and builds of the first two experimental domes, one built in Aarhus and moved to Copenhagen and the other built in Stockholm. The Dome of Visions 3.0 is 10.5 meters tall, 24 meters in diameter and covers 450 square meters of area, about 100 square meters more than the previous versions.

Architect Focuses on Sustainability

In his continued focus on sustainability, architect Kristoffer Tejlgaard decided that wood is the natural choice for the frame of the dome, choosing Kerto Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL) from MetsaWood.

“Wood as a building material has obvious advantages, giving sustainability for the building industry. In principle, wood is a material that comes from a solar-powered factory”, said Tejlgaard, which refers to the fact that trees to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it as carbon in their trunks – all through the power of the sun.

Elegant, Slim Design

One hundred cubic meters of Kerto LVL, in the form of 21-mm strips, was used in the construction of the Dome of Visions 3.0, and this amount of wood stores about 80 tons of carbon dioxide.

“This will save the atmosphere from 100 tons of CO2 compared to a similar building in concrete that would emit about 20 tons of CO₂,” reported Tejlgaard.

The use of this material allowed builders to employ a minimal amount of steel, and it gives the dome a sleek and elegant look. Most of the steel in the structure is in the star-shaped focal points.