What Happens to Mass Timber When Its Use Is Over?

You won’t believe what they’re going to do to the largest wood structure in the world now that they are done with it.

It was the largest wooden building ever constructed with a circumference of more than 1.2 miles, covering nearly 1.5 acres when it was built for Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan last year. But now its Japanese architect says The Grand Ring will be turned mostly into firewood.

The structure was always designed to be dismantled and some original plans indicated the wood would be recycled for housing projects but Sou Fujimoto told the online design website Dezeen that most of the wood used in the Grand Ring will now be burned.

“Unfortunately,” he said only about 10 percent of the structure will be saved “and then all the rest will be demolished. And then maybe 20 percent could be carefully dismantled and then transported to other places for the second life,” he continued.

“But 70 percent, at least as far as I’ve heard, they will just demolish and then make it chips for the fuel.”

Expo and Osaka authorities have not yet confirmed what will happen to The Grand Ring’s dismantled timber, Dezeen reported, adding that Fujimoto’s studio is not involved in the decision-making.

Fujimoto had higher hopes for the structure after it was completed and used at the fair. “I was hoping, I was expecting, from the very beginning that if the expo was very successful and if people really love it, then this Grand Ring could stay longer, like the Eiffel Tower or like some other few examples of the expo building which is staying longer,” he said.

This is “the worst thing to do,” he said. 

Image: Expo 2025

BACK TO NEWS