NEWS: Wood That Reaches New Heights (Laminated Wood)

Digital Fabrication and Cross Laminated Timber – New York Times article –

The Future of Building with Wood.

A front page article in the Science section of Monday’s New York Times – direct link herehttp://goo.gl/cpma7 and below.

Graphics from the article http://goo.gl/ht7RN and here http://goo.gl/ySszN 

As the article makes clear, Europe is far ahead in using CLT, especially Austria, Germany and Switzerland. These countries are also – in the opinion people with years of experience in the industry – leading in passive house fabrication, wood engineering, applying building science, and industrializing AEC in general.

For more information on CLT specifically

North American fabricators:
Canada:
Structurlam – http://www.structurlam.com/product/cross-laminated-timber.php
Nordic – http://www.nordicewp.com/literature/non-residential-canada/ and a recent Nordic project – 24 unit 4 story multi-family building – 22 days to construct (10 hours per day) – 5 people – video http://youtu.be/rT9LqYew8KY
The proposed Wood Innovation Center in British Columbia will be one of the first CLT wood buildings in North America http://goo.gl/MNuJ3

U.S. – Innovative Timber Systems http://www.smartwoods.com/
Seattle- based Arup engineer Hans-Erik Blomgren http://goo.gl/cdW0f (a video showing his presentation to the City of Seattle is available here at minute 122 http://goo.gl/Q3LK4) is one of the leaders among engineers in the U.S. promoting CLT and timber fabrication in general, and given Arup’s global reach and experience, his firm will almost inevitably play a leading role promoting such technologies.

Australia – The world’s tallest timber apartment building http://www.forteliving.com.au/
U.K. – Stadthaus http://goo.gl/qn5DS by HLK UK http://www.klhuk.com/home.aspx
Finland – http://goo.gl/pVlk7

A free 235 page PDF report http://goo.gl/zWxcM on Tall Wood buildings by architect Michael Green and structural engineer Eric Karsh of Equilibirum http://www.eqcanada.com/

And of course there are many buildings in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, many of them also very high-performance. Here is an example in Berlin http://goo.gl/vTrSv (info only in German).

Exciting to see more public information on the digital fabrication of wood-framed structures, my primary area of interest. And given that the Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia) is the largest wood producing region in one of the largest markets for wood-framed structures in the world, it’s definitely time for the industry to integrate cutting-edge technologies and building systems into the local industry.

Now is the time to rebuild the North American building industry so let’s do it using proven technologies demonstrated on tens of thousands of buildings. Systems integration and process engineering all based on collaboration with information technology – the best and possibly only way to make great architecture and high-performance building scalable and affordable to more people.

Source: NYT