17 March 2022

The Mjøstårnet: sustainable architecture through the lens of BG4SDGs- Time to Change

The quiet waters of Lake Mjøsa are surrounded by green hills, in whose vegetation are camouflaged few and scanty houses. Among these, however, there is one that towers high in the sky, as if to make itself visible from every point of the valley. It is the Mjøstårnet, a skyscraper of 18 floors and 85.4 meters high that is attracting the attention of the world for one of its peculiarities: it is built entirely of wood.

The story of the fifth episode of "BG4SDGs - Time to Change", the project conceived by Stefano Guindani in collaboration with Banca Generali to narrate the state of the art of the UN 2030 Agenda, starts from here, a hundred kilometers away from the Norwegian capital of Oslo. The Norwegian skyscraper thus becomes the subject from which the photographer's lens takes its cue to investigate at what point is the path to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) number 11 "Making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, durable and sustainable".

Opened on March 15, 2019, the Mjøstårnet is currently the tallest wooden skyscraper in the world. And even if its primacy will soon be surpassed, its legacy is already carved in the history of world architecture. Its body is in fact composed of over 2,700 cubic meters of wood taken from the forests in the area where it stands and able to absorb up to 1,700 tons of CO2. The trees pruned to give life to the construction of the skyscraper have been replaced by two other trees: in practice, the Mjøstårnet can be considered as a forest within a forest.

The idea that led to the construction of this Norwegian skyscraper is still a drop in the ocean of global construction. Something, however, is beginning to stir. The technique used to build Mjøstårnet, in fact, involves the total absence of any use of concrete and steel. In addition, each cubic meter of logs used in the structure contributes to removing 0.9 tons of carbon dioxide into the air. In other words, this construction activity not only generates no emissions, but even helps reduce them by acting as a storage reservoir. In a world that is constantly looking for effective solutions to combat climate change, Mjøstårnet is therefore proposed as a true disruptive element for a sustainable revolution that starts from the building industry and extends to the environment.

"Standing in front of Mjøstårnet is rewarding to the eye and you also have the feeling of being part of the turnaround towards an ecological destination. The interior and exterior of the skyscraper give you the feeling of being in front of something contiguous with the surrounding environment, as if it were an extension of nature itself. I believe that this is the direction that the buildings of the future will have to take, to be more and more sustainable from an architectural, aesthetic, visual and environmental point of view" said Stefano Guindani, photographer and curator of BG4SDGs - Time to Change.

The project

Presented on September 15, 2021 in Milan, BG4SDGs - Time to Change will now continue for another 12 months in order to explore all 17 SDGs of the UN 2030 Agenda. For each of them, the key adopted by the photographer will be twofold: on the one hand it aims to highlight the negative action of mankind on the environment and the community, on the other hand, how the same human race has instead an extraordinary ability to recover through innovative and sustainable solutions. In his research, Guindani will go beyond the Italian borders looking for critical cases and situations of excellence abroad: Brazil, Norway and Australia, but also the United States, Turkey and Kenya. He will be accompanied by an exceptional accompanist, Alberto Salza, one of the most internationally renowned anthropologists, who will edit the texts of the project and suggest some of the projects to be monitored.