The flat-pack skyscraper: how wood can shape the cities of the future

A tower from the forest next door

Mjøstårnet stands on the shore of Lake Mjøsa near the small Norwegian town of Brumunddal: 18 storeys, 84 metres, with offices, apartments and a 72-room hotel, and even a timber lift shaft. Developer Arthur Buchardt sketched the idea on a napkin in 2015 after the Paris climate agreement and took it to the Trondheim-based firm Voll Arkitekter. The timber comes from the immediate surroundings, and the glulam was supplied by the wood processor Moelven. According to Rune Abrahamsen of Moelven, the building rose at almost one storey per week, installed by a tower crane without external scaffolding.

We will look at a certificate of each building, and you will see its CO2 emissions.

Why concrete is the problem

That is how Buchardt describes where the market is heading. According to the article, the built environment accounts for 37 percent of global emissions, 7 to 8 percent from concrete manufacturing alone. Since 1960, concrete use has grown tenfold, less than 1 percent comes from recycled materials, and demand for sand is projected to rise by half by 2060. Mass timber is still expensive, and fire safety is the question every timber tower faces. Abrahamsen nevertheless considers the building particularly safe.

How Timber Carbon sees it

Mjøstårnet shows how much timber, and therefore how much carbon removed from the atmosphere, a single building can hold. Timber Carbon, launched in 2026 as a spin-off of Timber Finance, quantifies, certifies and monetises the carbon removed in mass timber buildings as carbon removal credits on the voluntary carbon market. Another example is the Sara Cultural Center in Sweden, covered by The Washington Post, and our Build biobased page explains what developers can do.