Træ – New life for old materials
Denmark’s tallest wooden building now towers 78 metres above the harbour skyline in the Danish city of Aarhus. Aptly named Træ, meaning wood in Danish, it is a landmark for innovation.
Træ challenges convention in many ways. Not only has it been constructed with a load-bearing structure in wood, but the building design is based on wide-scale implementation of reused resources. These range from recycled bricks and wood, discarded wind turbine blades used on the façade, and also upcycled windows on the lower floors.
KRONE supplied all the windows to the building, including the upcycled windows. These windows consist of at least 60% glass that was discarded in the production process because of defects or visual imperfections. In spite of this, the upcycled glass still meets the same performance standards with a high insulating effect resulting in a U-value of 0.85 W/m2K. Furthermore, they also have the same lifetime as conventionally sourced windows.
The upcycled windows are used on the lower floors of the building and arranged in a design to meet the building’s dimensions and needs. This was done using an AI- powered window arranging tool from the upcycling company again.
This focus on reusing existing resources has resulted in construction innovation and turned local waste streams into valuable resources for new building components. However, although the building uses unconventional materials, all the resulting components have been thoroughly tested to ensure they comply with building requirements and regulations.
The Træ project has taken another step towards greater sustainability in the industry and kickstarted many discussions about reusing building materials and rethinking waste. And it has already inspired a similar tall wooden building in Copenhagen.
