Finland's Metsä Wood, a supplier of wood products, announced the eight winning concepts of its fifth design competition. Metsä’s goal for the program, called Plan B, is to promote awareness of wood as a sustainable and renewable building material. The latest competition, called "The City Above the City," explored additional levels of wood construction atop existing buildings in dense urban settings.
Timber buildings are “all about changing the perception of how we build,” says Michael Green, "City Above the City" jury chairman and founder of design firm MGA, Vancouver, British Columbia, and the nonprofit school DBR | Design Build Research, which focuses on progressive architecture, research, education and innovation. For its second Plan B competition, Metsa, based in Espoo, Finland, selected Green to design Manhattan’s iconic Empire State Building using timber structural elements.