Tree houses: are wooden skyscrapers the future of tall buildings?

‘Timber towers’ might conjure up images of flammable, Jenga-like structures, but they could
represent the safe and eco-friendly future of construction.
The world is in the midst of a tall building boom, with more skyscrapers being built now than ever
before. From the outside, these towers present the epitome of the modern city, combining weird and
wonderful forms with seemingly endless curtain-wall glazing. But scratch below the surface and
you find essentially the same steel or concrete structure that supported the first skyscrapers in 19th
century New York and Chicago. However, this could be set to change through the reinvention of
one of our oldest construction materials – timber.

These developments are being led by Vancouver architect Michael Green and his proposal for the
tallest timber-supported tower in the world – a 35-storey skyscraper that forms part of a six-tower
development called Baobab in Paris. The building would be over three times taller than the world’s
current tallest timber building, the ten-storey Forté Apartments in Melbourne, and the UK’s tallest,
the nine-story Stadthaus. Other 30-storey-plus wooden towers are planned in Stockholm, Vancouver
and Vienna.

While the idea of timber towers may conjure up visions of multi-storey Swiss chalets, or high-rise
log-cabins, these skyscrapers are not the traditional timber-framed buildings we’re used to seeing.
Instead, the designs take advantage of recent innovations in “mass wood” to create vast solid timber
panels that can support buildings to a much taller height than ordinary wood can.

Green’s Baobab uses Cross Laminated Timber, or CLT. This consists of several layers of timber
board glued together at 90 degrees to form large structural sheets up to 40cm thick. The cross-
lamination provides the material’s dimensional stability and strength.

For the Baobab project, CLT sheets would be manufactured and cut to exact sizes before being
transported to site. Sheets can then be lifted into place and screwed together like a giant piece of
IKEA furniture.

“Their manufacture is very accurate, there’s very little work that needs to be done on site,” said
Green. “Because of this, construction will be very quick. Someday I’d like to make a building
where all you need is a giant allen key to put it together.”
source:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jul/07/tree-houses-are-wooden-skyscrapers-the-
future-of-tall-buildings