Accoya - the world’s leading modified wood product – has got everyone on their feet in Copenhagen, where it has been used to create an outdoor dance floor in the city’s popular Fælledparken Park.
The dance floor, which has endured significant footfall and remains in excellent condition two years after installation, demonstrates Accoya’s superior ability to withstand challenging external environments.
The floor is made from a series of distinctive Accoya decking boards with a tongue and groove profile, which were installed with a gap of just 1mm between each. Testament to Accoya’s resistance to excessive swelling, this minimal spacing would not have been possible with other timbers, which would have expanded in wet weather conditions and caused the wooden dance floor to buckle.
The layout of the floor ensures good ventilation under the decking boards, and, key to the design and construction, the circular floor is split into four quarters, with the boards in each adjacent quarter laid at right angles to one another to ensure minimal impact from any tangential swelling.
Manufactured using Accsys Technologies’ proprietary acetylation process, Accoya is one of the most advanced modified wood products on the market delivering outstanding levels of performance, such as exceptional dimensional stability and Class 1 durability. Accoya matches and in some case exceeds the performance of tropical hardwoods and it also boasts excellent environmental credentials by using wood sourced from FSC certified and sustainable forests as well as being Cradle to Cradle Gold certified.
Accoya’s high levels of durability and sustainability are vital in exterior applications such as this, which present numerous and insurmountable challenges for ordinary wood materials due to the risk of moisture penetration, varied temperatures, UV degradation, rot and decay. Modifications to the natural wood’s chemical structures during the acetylation process address each of these problems, resulting in the finished product – Accoya.
Bryan Crennell, Director of Sales and Marketing at Accsys Technologies said: “It is only down to the incredible performance attributes of Accoya that the wood can be reliably used in unusual and quirky applications such as this. Accoya offers architects and specifiers a new wood solution which combats the challenges of external applications, and what’s more, it is a naturally beautiful wood, able to blend perfectly into its surroundings at Fælledparken.”