Japan’s First High-Rise Hybrid Wood-Built Hotel Using Hokkaido-Grown Pine

Mitsubishi Estate Co., Ltd. ("Mitsubishi Estate") will open The Royal Park Canvas – Sapporo Odori Park in Sapporo, Hokkaido on October 1, 2021. This will be Japan's first high-rise hybrid wood-built hotel. It will primarily use Hokkaido-grown timber (Japanese larch and Sakhalin fir) and will be operated by Group company Royal Park Hotels and Resorts Co., Ltd.

The hotel is Japan's first high-rise, hybrid reinforced-concrete and wood-built building. The project employs MI Deck, a new product patented by Mitsubishi Estate, on the lower and middle floors of the building. MI Deck is used to construct wooden ceilings in this reinforced concrete section of the building, thereby creating warm spaces with the ambience of wood. The top three floors of the building, meanwhile, have an entirely wood-built structure. This unique project demonstrates the feasibility of using wood as a structural material in high-rise buildings. (This hotel building uses 1,050m3 of wood as a structural material, with approximately 80% being Hokkaido-grown).

In a Japanese forestry sector where using domestic timber has recently become a pressing social issue, this project embodies the developer's approach to the "Forest Grand Cycle" concept — maintaining and expanding forest resources while promoting a circular economy and contributing to social sustainability. The project also focused on reusing materials, such as using offcuts of the timber used for the exterior walls to create some of the interior furniture. In January 2020, Mitsubishi Estate established MEC Industry Co., Ltd. to manufacture products that can be used in wood-built and wood-furnished buildings, seeking to maintain the active use of Japan-grown timber, going forward.

MI Deck is a new type of building material that can double as a formwork material — the temporary material that is normally used when casting reinforced concrete and ultimately discarded — and as a finishing material for ceilings. The product contributes to the conservation of construction materials and helps to shorten construction times. It also helps reduce the workload at construction sites, helping to address the issue of a declining workforce. In the construction of the hotel building, Mitsubishi Estate has delivered on its commitment to local production for local consumption, and it has collaborated with companies in Hokkaido in all timber processing and product manufacture.

Going forward, Mitsubishi Estate aspires to contribute to the effective utilization and recycling of Japan-grown forest resources, as well as to environmental conservation. It will do this by actively using MI Deck and other new construction materials manufactured by MEC Industry from Japan-grown timber, not only in projects developed by Mitsubishi Estate and its Group companies, but also by marketing them for use in buildings constructed by other firms.

URL

The Royal Park Canvas – Sapporo Odori Park Press Release

https://www.mec.co.jp/j/news/archives/mec200326_odorinishi1.pdf(Japanese only)

MEC Industry website

https://www.mec-industry.com/(Japanese only)