Works

How eco-friendly timber is enabling the rise of "ply-scrapers" around the world

- Boyd Farrow

Anyone considering future-proof career options—a data scientist, perhaps, or an AI engineer—may want to add woodworker or even lumberjack to their list. This is not in case we all suddenly find ourselves, in some postapocalypse scenario, in need of log cabins to live in. Rather, it is because a growing number of architects, working with new high-tech engineered wood products as strong as steel and concrete, are already imagining tomorrow’s cities with towering timber skylines.

Plenty of statement buildings have already been constructed out of so-called mass timber— composites of compressed and bonded layers of wood—including Wyoming’s Jackson Hole Airport and Walmart’s new 350-acre campus headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. However, this material is increasingly being considered for a wide range of construction projects throughout the U.S.

Data from advocacy group WoodWorks shows that America had a total of 2,115 completed, in-design or in-construction mass timber buildings as of the end of March, compared with a paltry 50 a decade ago. This figure is now rising approximately 30 percent a year, as local building codes are rapidly being reviewed and state and federal funding continues to pour into innovations within the forestry sector.

The main driver for all this, of course, is climate change. Cement production accounts for eight percent of global carbon emissions, while steel is responsible for seven percent. The International Energy Agency claims that buildings account for 39 percent of the planet’s emissions: 11 percent from materials and construction and 28 percent from the energy needed to heat, cool and power them. Studies suggest that using mass timber—which stores carbon—for mid-rise structures could slash emissions associated with manufacturing, transporting and installing materials by almost a third.