If you want to help grow the market for your products it certainly does not hurt to have them on show for months on end in a popular central London location.
That is exactly what Finnforest is achieving this summer as the sponsor of a new summer pavilion for the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens. Not far from the Diana Memorial, you will find a curved structure made from the company’s Kerto-S LVL.
It does not come cheap – Finnforest is investing €400,000 in the project. But it sees great sales potential in the UK – its largest market for Kerto outside of Finland, with current British demand for the material more than 25,000m3 a year.
The major use of Kerto in the UK has so far been as a beam and header material in timber frame and I-joist floors. But Finnforest now reports growth in other applications, such as gridshell structures in the UK and Europe. The pavilion project is intended to kick-off a big marketing campaign for the whole of the Finnforest portfolio in the UK within building and construction.
The building, to be used as a meeting room for seminars and arts events, uses more than 60m3 of Kerto-S, which is predominantly used as a load-bearing material. It is made with the veneer’s grain running in the same direction.
Finnforest and its German engineering arm Merk took on the whole project as a specialist design, supply and install contractor.
Realising the vision of Portuguese architects Alvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura required a close working relationship, with Arup, Bovis and the Serpentine Gallery meeting regularly both on site and in Germany.
Ideal material
Michael Keller, Finnforest’s vice-president of building projects in Europe, said LVL was ideal for the structure because of the type of cross-sections involved. “It’s very thin and economical. The structure would have been too difficult and expensive in glulam.”
Kerto was shipped from Finland and fabricated in Germany by Finnforest Merk’s robot technology (the same used to make cars), based on computer models generated by Arup.
Merk took just two weeks to cut LVL into the 427 sections needed. The biggest challenge was using 3D modelling to get the connections right.
It realised the complex geometric structure using traditional mortice and tenon jointing between the approximately 2m-long Kerto members to form a geodetic dome roof structure with a 17m clear span.
At the Serpentine’s request, Finnforest Merk installed a polycarbonate roof covering.
The project was a European initiative involving personnel from both the UK, who handled overall project management and client liaison, and Germany, handling technical and production project management. Finnforest Merk undertook site management with an installation crew of two German and five UK workers.
The Pavilion was constructed ahead of schedule for the official opening at the end of June. It will be used during the summer and then relocated in the autumn.
An unnamed buyer has already been found for the structure.
