Together, they make the Year of the Wood Dragon sound surprisingly like this year’s mass timber outlook. Engineered wood products continue to go from strength to strength with improved durability and energy efficiency. Wood is replacing climate-damaging concrete with each new build/renovation. Overall, the construction industry is transforming in a nature positive direction.
In 2023, Stora Enso alone enabled approximately 2,000 buildings globally.
While we are witnessing a rise of sustainable buildings with climate-smart, creative, and flexible adaptable designs, this progress has challenges. 2024 is predicted to be one of the hottest years, if not the hottest, on Earth. We are seeing resource depletion, waste generation, greenhouse gas emissions and environmental degradation like we have not seen before.
Whether you believe in zodiacs or not, to celebrate the new year, we wanted to share with you some lightness and brightness with these low-carbon buildings of 2024.
These climate-resilient buildings showcase some of the latest in wood architecture and herald a design future that fully embraces renewable materials, integrates nature, and reuses existing fabric. They are all made with inclusive community in mind and thanks to advances in collaborative design processes, many involved community stakeholders during the design process.
We look forward to the opening of these new buildings in 2024, with immense hope for the next 60-year cycle until the Wood Dragon returns. We thank our building solution partners for sharing their projects with us. We think they are beautiful — see what you think. We might be biased, after all, wood is our element every year.