WOOD AWARD 2010 goes to Luukku House by Aalto University students
Students of Aalto University have won the Wood Award 2010, a Finnish prize for innovative uses of wood in construction in Finland, for their zero energy house named Luukku.
The Kuokkala Church in Jyväskylä, Finland earned an honorary mention in the competition.
The 2010 Wood Award competition emphasized energy, climate and environmental issues. Luukku (meaning “hatch” in Finnish) has been designed with special attention to the environmental impact of the house over its entire life cycle starting from the manufacture of construction materials. More than 75 percent of the materials are made from renewable sources, and as such Luukku sets an example for energy-efficient construction of the future.
The 42-square-metre Luukku is proof that it is possible in Finland to build zero-energy houses with a small carbon footprint. The house is powered by solar energy, and its performance can be monitored with sensors. The house is equipped with many innovative solutions, which can be found in the load-bearing structures, insulation, interior cladding as part of indoor air and humidity control, the method of joining glass and wood, and building technologies.
The design and realization of the house is by the Luukku Team at Aalto University, led by Professor Pekka Heikkinen.
The architectural design also won first prize in the Solar Decathlon Europe 2010 competition in Madrid last summer. Luukku, cited for subdued beauty, will be on display at the Holiday Housing Fair 2011 in Mäntyharju, Finland (some 200 km from Helsinki) next summer.
The Wood Award is an annual prize awarded by the Finnish Timber Council (Puuinfo), an organization for domestic wood promotion. The prize recognizes a building, interior or structure that represents high-quality Finnish wood architecture or one in which wood has been used in ways that advance construction technology. The current Wood Award is the 13th in the history of the prize. It is part of a campaign promoting wood as the most ecological construction material by the Finnish Forest Foundation.
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