Functional and aesthetic

Modern design, spacious rooms: the new Arrivals hall at Oslo Airport doesn't only impress passengers. A special feature is the 4,500 square meter ceiling made of spruce panels - coated with Teknos’ fire-retardant TEKNOSAFE 2467-00.

Wooden ceiling with fire-retardant coating at Oslo Airport

With around 24 million passengers a year, Oslo Airport is Norway's largest airport and an important transport hub in Northern Europe. A new chapter begins here on April 27: after a construction time of nearly five years, it will celebrate the opening of an ample extension. This comprises a new, 300 meter long pier with floor space of 63,000 square meters, 17 gates and numerous stores and restaurants. In addition, a 52,000 square meter extension building now adjoins the terminal building, with 34 state-of-the-art check-in desks, which enable efficient processing with short waiting times. Thanks to its expansion the airport has nearly doubled in size, and in future will have capacity for up to 30 million passengers a year.

A friendly welcome

The new Arrivals hall went into service back in September. The western extension building was connected to the existing central building as an integral part of the whole, and its roof has the same striking, curved contours. Inside, the building is light and spacious. It boasts large, freely accessible areas with new restaurants, stores, service facilities and a great deal of space for passengers.

The successful combination of wood and concrete is very characteristic of this airport's architecture. The same applies to the new Arrivals hall. A 4,500 square meter ceiling construction of light spruce wood ensures a warm, friendly atmosphere. But the use of wood as a construction material in airports is far from a foregone conclusion. "In many public buildings, materials such as plaster and stone are still used for reasons of fire safety," explains Winfried Schaal, Product Manager at Moelven Wood Prosjekt AS. "But wood treated with fire-retardant coatings provides a very interesting, environmentally friendly alternative, and more and more architects and building contractors are coming round to this view." 

Exclusively home-grown spruce

Moelven Wood Prosjekt supplied the wood for the ceiling construction in the new terminal. The Moelven Group is one of Norway's leading wood and timber suppliers. It has 3,400 employees at 52 production sites and is active in the woodworking and timber processing industry, retail and construction. Its portfolio extends from raw timber to external casings and laminated elements all the way to fully prefabricated construction modules. Its numerous reference projects include the 'Treet' in Bergen, Norway, for example. At a height of 51 meters, it is the world's tallest timber-framed multi-family project, and also benefits from fire-retardant coatings from Teknos.

Spruce wood from home-grown Norwegian forests was exclusively used for the ceiling panels in the new Arrivals hall. In the Moelven plant around 100 kilometers north of Oslo, panels 21 mm thick in three different widths from five to ten centimeters were manufactured then impregnated using a vacuum pressure technique. "Among other things, our FireGuard impregnation ensures that the wood only produces a little smoke when exposed to fire. This makes evacuation easier in the event of a fire, and is very important particularly somewhere like an airport," explains Winfried Schaal. The FireGuard-impregnated wooden panels have CE certification in accordance with the Construction Products Regulation, and have fire classification B‑s1, d0.

Fire-retardant coating

To ensure an optimum, aesthetically pleasing finish, the wooden panels are also coated. For this, as with other projects, Moelven has put its trust in TEKNOSAFE 2467-00. When exposed to heat, this fire-retardant clear coat swells to form a resistant layer of microporous carbon foam, insulating the wood.

"Fire classification B-s1, d0 can be achieved with TEKNOSAFE 2467-00, depending on the substrate," declares Arve Valsø, International Technical Manager for Industrial Wood and one of the Teknos experts on fire-retardant coatings. "This opens up a whole array of new options for architects and building contractors. In areas not exposed to the weather - like the ceiling construction in the airport - it is therefore possible to achieve natural wooden surfaces while still complying with stringent fire safety requirements. This solution is very popular and is being used increasingly often in construction projects."

Thanks to the use of TEKNOSAFE 2467-00, the wooden panels at Oslo Airport attain fire classification B-s1, d0 even after coating.

Intelligent design

The coated panels were preassembled to form ceiling elements 60 x 240 cm in size by Norwegian interior specialist Trysil Interiørtre. Trysil Interiørtre is a renowned manufacturer of veneered and laminated wood products, and specializes in fire-resistant wall and ceiling claddings, among other areas.

"The ceiling construction at Oslo Airport was a particular challenge," reports Erik Owrenn, Product Manager at Trysil Interiørtre. "Firstly, we had to incorporate technical systems such as lighting, ventilation and sprinklers in the wooden ceiling, then the ceiling cladding had to be easy to open for maintenance purposes." As a solution, Trysil Interiørtre developed a combination of fixed and folding elements. These elements are affixed to the light steel framework of the ceiling using the click system, and a large section of the ceiling can be opened without having to remove elements from the construction.

Functionality and aesthetics

"The new Arrivals hall at Oslo Airport is an excellent example of how functionality and aesthetics do not have to contradict one another," says Arve Valsø. "This also applies to fire protection. With modern fire-retardant coatings like TEKNOSAFE 2467-00, wood claddings for walls and ceilings are no problem, even for large public buildings such as airports.

https://avinor.no/en/corporate/airport/oslo/

www.moelven.com

www.trysil-interiortre.no

(c) Moelven / Jan Lillehamre