Behind the victory of the Solar Decathlon competition lies Metsä Wood
Team Rhône-Alpes, from France, won the Solar Decathlon competition for energy-efficient construction with their Canopea House and Metsä Wood’s Kerto®-based components were used in the structures of the building. The Canopea House is a ten storey ‘nano-tower’ with a single room per floor. The floors of the Canopea House are made of Metsä Wood’s Kerto-Ripa panels, and Kerto-Q is used for the bracing of the house’s steel frame.
For the competition, which was held in Madrid, the team brought the two top floors, consisting of 70 square metres of living space and a 100 square metre patio. The house also offers functions that are part of normal living, such as washing facilities and play areas. Team Rhône-Alpes consists of students at Grenoble University of Technology, from degree programmes in architecture, design, and management. The participating students tested the functionality of the house by living in it for the full duration of the competition which was fourteen days.
The Solar Decathlon competition is held every second year, this year on 14th to 30th September. The purpose of the competition is to build a solar-powered house. The competition consists of ten individual contests, in fields such as architecture, energy-efficiency, and innovation. As in the Olympic Decathlon, the winner of the contest is the team achieving the most points. The total number of points earned by the Canopea House was 908.72. The Spanish Patio House that came second had 897.39 points, and the Med in Italy House of the Italian team, in third place, reached 863.49 points. Participants in the competition comprised 20 university teams, from 15 countries.
One of the Metsä Wood building solutions used in the Canopea House is Kerto-Ripa, a structurally glued roof or floor panel with advantages such as long spans, light weight (0.5–0.8 kN/m2), and a 30- to 60-minute fire-resistance class. A prefabricated element is shipped to the site with roofing, lining, and thermal insulation already installed. Elements, which can be up to 40 or 50 square metres in size, speed up construction, thanks to their design for prompt installation.
Images can be downloaded from Metsä Group’s data bank:
http://databank.metsagroup.com/?cart=925-acgcgmfikg&l=FI
About the competition:
http://www.solardecathlon.gov/sd_europe.html
For more information about the structures of the Canopea House, please contact:
Jouni Hakkarainen, Director of Product Development at Metsä Wood, at tel. +358 50 598 9611
Metsä Wood provides competitive and ecologically sound wood-based solutions for industrial building, the construction industry, homebuilders, and other housing use. We manufacture products from Nordic wood, a sustainable raw material of premium quality. Our turnover was 940 million euros in 2011, and we employ about 2,900 people. Metsä Wood is part of Metsä Group.