PuuMera

PuuMera is the most notable residential timber building in Finland and also the largest in Europe. It was completed for the Housing Fair Finland in Kivistö, Vantaa in summer 2015. Sweco was in charge of the structural engineering and element design of the building.

The construction on site was started in March 2014, and the manufacture of the wooden elements in January 2014. The wooden apartment building is based on a wooden structure system called PuuMera, which was developed by Rakennusliike Reponen and its partners. This system is based on using glued laminated timber structures. The apartment building was completed for the Housing Fair Finland in Kivistö, Vantaa, in summer 2015, and its construction utilised the experience of the PuuMera wooden construction project in Vierumäki.

The wooden apartment building has 186 apartments, 107 of which are rental apartments and 79 right-of-occupancy apartments. The building’s total surface area is 10,120 m2, and it is 7 floors tall at its highest point.

Due to the building’s large size and weather protection, the project was divided into three phases.

Additionally, cityscape-related reasons set some special requirements for the structural engineering. The building has multifaceted space and facade solutions set within a large entity of structural engineering. The building has three different balcony types as well as two holes in the building frames which are equipped with structures made of glued laminated timber.

The PuuMera Kivistö project utilised information modelling in many different ways. Tekla Structures was used for structural engineering, ArchiCAD for architectural design and MagiCAD for building service system plans. The geographic design of the site was also modelled. Tekla BIMsight and Solibri Model Checker software were used for coordinating the information models and combining them as well as for integrating and inspecting them.

The modelling facilitated the cooperation between the different parties of this extensive project. It strategically simplified the integration of the structures. One of the most important objectives of this project was to increase the degree of prefabrication as high as possible with the help of information modelling.

Due to its large size and the numerous details, PuuMera Kivistö was a challenging target for information modelling. The building comprises over 2,000 elements and a large number of various parts.

The eco-friendly PuuMera holds its own in terms of carbon footprint comparisons, living comfort and its degree of domestic origin. The design of the building paid special attention to energy efficiency and the building’s impact during its whole life cycle. The site fulfils the requirements of a passive house standard defined by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, and it has been awarded as the most climate friendly apartment building in Finland in the Haaste2013 competition held by the Confederation of Finnish Construction Industries RT and Green Building Council Finland.

The PuuMera wooden apartment building utilises renewable sources of energy and paves the way for a new kind of apartment building construction and real estate development.

Sweco was in charge of the structural engineering and element design of the building.