Tree Houses: Are Wooden Skyscrapers the Future of Tall Buildings?
28th January 2016
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.
January 30th, 2016 at 15:29
It’s a charming idea, but I want to know what happens when the wood starts to decay, as all natural materials inevitably do. And how do they determine the “end of the building’s life cycle”? I expect lawyers to have a field day over this, arguing on one hand that the property owner should be compensated for the “early” retirement of the building, and on the other that the tenants should be compensated for the risks inherent in a wooden structure after some, predetermined point.