metla-talo-veneI got up early this morning and was taken on a privileged guided tour of the Metla House, the Joensuu base of the Finnish Forest Research Institute. The tour was kindly given to me by the Institute’s Director, Jari Parviainen. The House, completed in 2004, was the first large wooden, timber-framed, three-storey office building in Finland. Over the past five years the House has become an important reference point for timber construction and has received over 25,000 visitors, many of them architects. The building is an eloquent aesthetic statement of the fact that you can build big with wood – and when you build with wood, you also trap carbon and create a nice working environment.