In March 2019, the International Council for Tall Buildings and the Urban Environment (CTBUH) awarded the 85.4 m high multifunctional tower in southern Norway the title of the tallest wooden structure in the world. We are talking about engineering wood, glued beams (glulam): we talked in detail about the construction process and the technical features of the tower here.
Now Mjøstårnet has been in the ranks for a year. Its name translates as "tower [on lake] Mjøsa": the building is located on the shores of Norway's largest lake, recognizable from afar as a wooden one and is clearly visible to passing motorists, who now pay attention to the city of Brumundal. This was the goal of the architects and the developer, but still not the main one.
It was much more important to show the possibilities of wood as a building material, an environmentally friendly renewable resource that retains CO2 - as opposed to trees that live to natural death and release all the carbon dioxide retained during their life back into the atmosphere when they rot. Naturally, it makes sense to use wood only with a “sustainable” scheme of felling and compensation planting, but in the vicinity of Burmundal, a well-known region of logging and woodworking, all these rules are always respected.
The authors of the project emphasize that the places where 3,500 m3 of timber (14,000 trees) required for construction are mined and converted into glued beams are literally visible from the top of Mjöstornet, that is, CO2 emissions and resource costs for transportation have been minimized.
The tower is located right next to the water, where pedestrian and bicycle paths now lead. An aqua center with two 25-meter swimming pools (4500 m2) is opened in a low annex, and the tower itself (10,500 m2) on the ground floor contains a lobby and a restaurant, above it is a conference center, above it there are five floors of free-plan offices, four hotel floors (72 rooms), five tiers with 32 apartments. On the 17th and 18th floors there are three penthouses, an exhibition hall and an observation deck accessible to everyone.
