Wooden skyscrapers could be the future for cities
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Published 2018-02-01
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By 2050 the world’s population is expected to soar to almost 10 billion people and two-thirds of us will live in cities.
Space will be at a premium.
High-rise offers a solution. But concrete and steel – the materials we currently use to build high – have a large carbon footprint.
An answer might lie in a natural material we’ve used for millennia.
Throughout history buildings have been made of wood.
But it has one major drawback. It acts as kindling.
Fire destroyed large swathes of some of the world’s great cities.
But by the early twentieth century, the era of modern steelmaking had arrived.
Steel was strong, could be moulded into any shape and used to reinforce concrete. It allowed architects to build higher than ever before.
So why, after more than a century of concrete and steel, are some architects proposing a return to wood?
Concrete and steel are costly to produce and heavy to transport.
Wood however can be grown sustainably and it’s lighter than concrete.
And crucially, as trees grow, they absorb carbon dioxide from the air, locking it into the timber.
One study showed that using wood to construct a 125-metre skyscraper could reduce a building’s carbon footprint by up to 75%
Regular timber isn’t malleable like steel or concrete, and isn’t strong enough to build high.
But engineers have come up with a solution. It’s called cross-laminated timber, or CLT for short.
CLT is light and it’s comparable in strength to concrete and steel.
But how does it cope when burnt with a high heat source?
London architects Waugh Thistleton are already designing buildings with this new kind of timber.
Andrew and his colleagues designed Britain’s first high-rise wooden apartment block and have recently completed the world’s largest timber-based building.
Behind these bricks is a timber core, made from more than 2000 trees, sourced from sustainable forests.
And this London practice is not alone in advocating the use of CLT.
Ambitious wooden high-rise buildings are also being constructed in Scandinavia, central Europe and North America.
As yet, nobody has used CLT to build beyond 55 metres.
But Michael Ramage’s research centre in Cambridge, working with another London practice, has proposed a concept design of a 300-metre tower, that could be built on top of one of London’s most iconic concrete structures – the Barbican.
Making that jump in height will be a difficult sell.
The cost of building wooden skyscrapers is largely unknown, but those costs could be reduced by prefabricating large sections of buildings in factories.
And city-dwellers will need to be persuaded that CLT does not burn like ordinary wood.
As an attractive, natural material, wood is already popular for use in low buildings.
If planners approve, it could rise to new heights.
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All Comments (21)
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Front desk.... yeah there is a woodpecker banging on my wall again....
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Just turn off Fire Spread in the settings and bam, you good to go
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Is the floor creaking... or is it the entire building?
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Termites: “I’m boutta end this mans whole career”
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Jet fuel can't melt wooden beams!
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“It has the same protection as what a tree uses to protect its self against forrest fires” Cali: “um.....”
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Can you imagine living on a 67th floor and have a woodpecker bang your structure everyday lol!
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People owning chainshaws could be deadly😂😂
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Then the fire nation attacked..
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food for termites
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Someone’s been playing too much jenga
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Is it just me, or is this new "technology" just a Jenga reboot?
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As an architect, wood looks nicer but knowing developers, they will over-log forests and forget the sustainability aspect of it all
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I am cautiously optimistic. To those using deforestation as an argument against, mining is also quit devastating to the environment.
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Steel-Reinforced Concrete: "AM I A JOKE TO YOU?"
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As much as i love this idea and concept. I feel like our time and resources would be better spent in using all that wasted roof space in cities. Can you imagine if buildings were made strong enough so that roofs could be connected together and made into nature parks. Just imagine your city, being able to walk around on the top of buildings, with grass, lakes, tree, bushes, good for humans, good for animals, insects, good for environment.
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Nobody talks about the fact that wood is terrible in very humid places.
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Looks good, sounds good but wondering how big of a forest needed to build one skycrapper..
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dude acting like CLT is new and revolutionary, isn't it basically plywood just thicker?
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The hippies from the sixties are out in full force
