We all know that residential buildings built from wood are a great choice for living but what about huge buildings like skyscrapers, office buildings, malls, apartments, schools, etc? Do you think such buildings can be built of wood?
After reading this blog post, make sure to watch this great informal video about the future of wood in cities, that also covers fire safety questions -
The resulting wooden towers, sometimes dubbed "plyscrapers", were once the preserve of conceptual designers. But thanks to changes in building regulations and shifting attitudes towards the material, they are quickly becoming a reality.
Structural wood products like CLT have a number of advantages in tall wooden building construction: they are lighter than conventional materials, require less energy to make than either steel or concrete (and thus produce lower emissions), and can sequester carbon.
Mjøsa Tower, the tallest wooden building in the world, was completed in March 2019. Located in Brumunddal, Norway, the tower measures 85.4m-tall and features 18 floors with a hotel, offices, and residential apartments.
Brazilian school made out of timber and mud-brick Children Village, which doesn’t need air-con even in 45-degree heat was voted the world’s best building in 2018 by Royal Institute of British Architects.
The Jonesuu apartment building is a case in point. Virtually anyplace else in the world, that exposed skeleton would be concrete reinforced with steel. In Finland it’s wood: In fact, save for a two-inch concrete slab between each floor, the whole building is made of wood. Specifically, one of the high-tech engineered materials collectively called mass timber or structural timber.
Timber is the only truly renewable building material and also absorbs and stores carbon from the atmosphere (carbon sequestration). Using one cubic meter of wood in place of other materials results in 0.8 tonnes of C02 being locked within the building.