In 2016, we won the international competition do design the new cultural centre Sara Kulturhus in Skellefteå, Sweden. The project has garnered worldwide attention and won prizes even long before its completion this year. With Sara Kulturhus, we aim to expand the application possibilities of wood as a construction material for complex high-rise buildings and to drive development and change in the field of sustainable construction.
White Arkitekter exhibits at Aedes in Berlin
On 18 September, we enter the international scene of contemporary architecture at world-renowned Aedes in Berlin. In the exhibition “A Heart of Wood”, the visitors will follow the journey of our unique timber project Sara Kulturhus in Skellefteå, Sweden. With its 20 storeys, the building is one of the world’s tallest timber high-rise structures and an international showcase for sustainable design.
Sustainability has been at our core since the very start in 1951. With the goal to enable sustainable life through architecture and the vision that all their projects will be climate neutral or better by 2030, we are matching the ambition of New European Bauhaus. When the EU commission launched the initiative in September 2021, architecture was situated in the centre of the green transition we need to achieve together. In Sweden, this process had already initiated in 2019, when the parliament agreed on a new architectural policy towards 2030. Embracing collaboration across different disciplines is the way forward, but also to collaborate across borders. Therefore, we believe in the importance to present our work at Aedes in Germany.
With the exhibition “A Heart of Wood” we would like to celebrate a great collaborative achievement in the north of Sweden. We are looking forward to the exchange and discussions around this event and to future collaborations, where we can share knowledge and innovate together.
Carl Bäckstrand, Deputy CEO and International Director
Sara Kulturhus will be inaugurated on 8 September. It houses venues for arts, performance, and literature as well as a hotel with restaurant, sky bar and spa Standing almost 80 meters tall, the hotel is built up from pre-manufactured 3D-modules in cross-laminated timber, stacked between two elevator cores entirely made of CLT.
In the exhibition, visitors will be able to experience different aspects of the process that led to this building: from urban context to architecture, from design to construction, with its advanced prefab modular thinking. Drawings, models, photos, and films presented in a special installation consisting of 15 CLT elements built from 2.7 tons of wood that can be regarded as the signature of our sustainable approach to architecture.
“A Heart of Wood” runs from the 18 September to 11 November 2021 at Aedes Architecture Forum in Berlin. Click here for more information.