The MMTD Article “Swedish Symbiosis: 80 Meters of Stacked Forest” by Daniel Ibañez and Maria Cotela Dalmau has recently been featured by the Spanish platform Madera y Construcción
During the first module of the inaugural year of the Master in Mass Timber Design (MMTD), an article that was conceptually developed in the framework of the Narratives course has been published on the website of Madera y Construccion. Madera y Construccion is a Spanish language platform for the dissemination and discussion of architectural projects using wood as the protagonist for its construction systems.
The article, written by MMTD Director Daniel Ibañez in collaboration with MMTD student Maria Cotela Dalmau, focuses on Sweden as a huge timber producer, praising its strong forestry management practices, which will allow for the predicted growth of the population of the particular city of Skelleftea through the use of mass timber building wherever possible.
It follows the winning proposal from 2015 called Sara Kulturhouse designed by White Arkitektur, which shows the vast possibilities of mass timber which are informed by and adapt to programmatic needs. Not only is this project a model for the large-scale possibilities of various prefabricated timber products, but it also shows a commitment to addressing the entire value chain involved in the construction of new buildings.
The Narrative course, during the first term of MMTD studies, aims at reviewing the state of the art in Mass Timber Design of Singular Housing and Prototypes. This article is one of many collaborations to come, growing out of the global network of the program.
MMTD connects students to an international network of practitioners, global institutions and companies leading mass timber design agendas, research, tools, projects and applications in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) field.
Bios of the authors:
Maria Cotela Dalmau studied architecture in Barcelona at the Barcelona Technical School of Architecture and in Paris at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Malaquais. After multiple professional experiences in both the public and private sectors in Spain and France, she moved to Stockholm, Sweden, where she currently works as an architect at the Wester + Elsner Arkitekter office. She is currently studying the Master in Mass Timber Design at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia.
Daniel Ibanez is an architect and urban planner based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He is a Doctor of Design at Harvard University, Director of the Master in Mass Timber Design and co-Director of the Master in Advanced Ecological Buildings and Biocities at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia. Daniel is an expert in urban planning and ecological construction, especially through the use of industrialized solid wood. Daniel is, among others, co-author of the book Wood Urbanism: From the Molecular to the Territorial (Actar, 2019) and ecological projects in wood such as the Fab Lab House (Madrid, 2010), Endesa Pavilion (Oslo, 2013) , the Endesa World Fab Condenser pavilion (Barcelona, ??2014), or the micro-housing prototypes such as the Tiny House or the Voxel (Barcelona, ??2019-2020).
Do you believe that the environmental challenges of this century demand a new generation of buildings made from renewable, reusable, and carbon-storing materials?
Timber is uniquely positioned to address this challenge, learn more about IAAC online Master in Mass Timber Design (MMTD)!
