Wood as a healthy influence in schools
More and more school buildings are being constructed with a timber frame, which seems to be good for both body and mind. A successful example can be found in Hammarö, where ByggDialog and Hammarö Municipality completed Mörmoskolan secondary school in 2024.
Healthy learning environments
The alarm bells from the world of education are ringing loud and clear: today’s students and teachers are subject to huge pressures, with scarce resources. Effects such as lowering stress and boosting creativity are, perhaps, even more of a focus when trying to design sustainable, healthy learning environments. But does the choice of material matter?
Is the feeling really any different in wooden schools?
It certainly is, says Jessica Gottmarsson, project engineer at ByggDialog.
“Using wood in school environments has several advantages. Natural materials such as wood can have a calming effect and are considered good for focus and learning, and we also know that wood absorbs sound and that acoustics are important for learning environments. The feeling itself is hard to put your finger on, but everyone who is in some way involved in our wooden school projects says the same thing − the schools feel nice to be in, and I think that comfort and well-being in themselves enhance people’s ability to absorb knowledge,” says Jessica.
Soft values hard to measure
ByggDialog, ranked the fourth largest school builder in Sweden in 2022, is the contractor for several wooden building projects across the country. Building in wood is easy and many people report a pleasant working environment even during the actual construction process, says Jessica.
Hammarö Municipality, in Värmland, has recently commissioned several schools with timber frames. The secondary school pupils who have moved into the newly built Mörmoskolan have taken very good care of their premises − perhaps better than anyone dared hope for. The students’ previous school was quite badly affected by vandalism and graffiti and there were clear concerns from Hammarö Municipality that exposed wooden surfaces would suffer the same treatment. In addition to the timber frame, the architecture of Mörmoskolan has kept many expanses of exposed wood in the interior.
“The students were moved from a school with modular classrooms and we weighed the pros and cons of leaving the wood visible in the stairwells and on the walls for a long time. In the end, we decided to actually expose as much of the wood as we could. This discussion highlights the difficulties of practically demonstrating all the benefits of wood. We have no metrics for many of the soft values we experience in wooden schools. But the municipality took the plunge in exposing the wooden surfaces and the result has been nothing but positive,” says Jessica.
Less vandalism, better atmosphere
With the right treatment, wood surfaces are easier to clean and more resistant to wear. Experience shows that wooden schools not only work practically, but actually seem to deliver a better experience for everyone in them. It is not uncommon to see students and teachers touching the walls and enjoying the tactility.
Joakim Axelsson, the municipality’s coordinator for the school project in Hammarö, is pleased that wood was chosen as the building material.
“Mörmoskolan is a popular place to work, and the teachers and students really love it. I think that’s partly down to the lovely feeling that wood creates. While we have no empirical evidence, we generally feel that we have less vandalism in the new school and that the young people take better care of the premises. Hammarö Municipality’s experience of building with a timber frame has been entirely good, with positive signals coming from all sides, and I hope we make the same choice in the future,” concludes Joakim.