When plans for Tokyo’s W350 skyscraper were made public, they caused a stir. Not because at 350 metres it will be Japan’s tallest building, nor that its estimated cost will be £4.2 billion. The reason was more fundamental: it will be made almost entirely of wood.
There’s a simple explanation for why wood is not traditionally used in tall buildings: fire. Yet the W350 is not alone. The proposed Sida Vid Sida building in Sweden will be a timber structure wrapped in glass, for instance, and flats are already for sale at the 73-metre wooden Haut building in Amsterdam.
What’s behind the boom? New forms of timber have emerged recently, boasting superior strength and fire resistance. Take “cross-laminated timber” – wood arranged in a crisscross pattern and bound together with fireproof glue – which is stronger than steel at high temperatures. As ecological concerns become increasingly pressing, building in wood could become commonplace. If that sounds unlikely, consider this: when the first concrete skyscraper, the Ingalls Building in Ohio, was opened in 1903, the press thought it would fall apart overnight. Instead, it kick-started a whole new era in architecture. Are we on the dawn, now, of another?
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