Katajanokan Laituri, the largest mass timber building in Finland, has been awarded the Wood Architecture Award by international press at a wood construction event in Paris on February 27, 2025. The International Award for Wood Architecture award aims to bring exceptional wooden architecture into the limelight, to encourage innovation in design, and to unite countries in their common appreciation of wooden construction.

Designed by the architects at Anttinen Oiva and developed by the pension company Varma in 2024, the building is home to the headquarters of forestry group Stora Enso and the Solo Sokos Pier 4 hotel. This four-storey building has a vast rooftop terrace planted with coastal reeds and grasses, and its ground floor restaurants, cafés, offices, conference spaces, and other services open onto the surrounding city.

Katajanokan Laituri reflects Stora Enso’s material portfolio. The load-bearing frame, with columns and beams, and the façade structure are made of veneer wood from Stora Enso’s factory in Varkaus, Finland. Interior walls, elevator and stair shafts, and floor and roof structures are constructed from cross-laminated wood from Stora Enso’s Grunön sawmill at Grums, in Värmland, Sweden. Approximately 6,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide was sequestered during the growth of the trees used in the Katajanokan Laituri’s wooden structures, and this continues to be stored in the building.

The International Award for Wood Architecture has now been granted seven times. In this competition, architectural magazines from five countries – Finland, Switzerland, Germany, France and Sweden – each propose a maximum of three projects from their own country, which are then voted on by a jury representing each of the magazines: Puu-lehti (Finland), Trä (Sweden), Mikado (Germany), Lignum (Switzerland) and Séquences Bois (France). Magazines may not vote for their own proposals. Finland last won the award in 2023 for the Martta Wendelin daycare centre.