Wooden architecture

Post Reply
User avatar
wjfox
Site Admin
Posts: 8663
Joined: Sat May 15, 2021 6:09 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Wooden architecture

Post by wjfox »

A place for news and talk about wooden buildings, towers, and infrastructure.

Probably the oldest known building material, but it seems to have made a comeback in recent years, due to its sustainability and other qualities.

---------------------------------------------

Isn’t it good, Swedish plywood: the miraculous eco-town with a 20-storey wooden skyscraper

Thu 14 Oct 2021 06.00 BST

As you come in to land at Skellefteå airport in the far north of Sweden, you are greeted by a wooden air traffic control tower poking up from an endless forest of pine and spruce. After boarding a biogas bus into town, you glide past wooden apartment blocks and wooden schools, cross a wooden road bridge and pass a wooden multistorey car park, before finally reaching the centre, now home to one of the tallest new wooden buildings in the world.

“We are not the wood Taliban,” says Bo Wikström, from Skellefteå’s tourism agency, as he leads a group of visitors on a “wood safari” of its buildings. “Other materials are allowed.” But why build in anything else – when you’re surrounded by 480,000 hectares of forest?

If you are wondering what a climate-conscious future looks like, small subarctic Skellefteå (pronounced “she left you”) has some of the answers. In a clearing on its outskirts, Europe’s largest battery factory is currently under construction. The next generation of electric vehicle batteries will not only be produced here, but recycled too. Electric helicopters will soon be able to shuttle visitors to the gargantuan Northvolt gigafactory, while longer-distance electric aeroplanes are being tested nearby.

Skellefteå runs on 100% renewable energy from hydropower and wind, and recycles 120,000 tonnes of electronic waste a year, with excess heat from the process fed back into the city-wide heating system. And now, nosing 20 storeys above the low-rise skyline, Skellefteå has a fitting monument to its carbon-cutting credentials. The Sara Cultural Centre and its towering Wood Hotel stand as beacons of what it is possible to do with timber – and store about 9,000 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere in the process.

“When I saw the competition proposal, I didn’t think it would be possible to build,” says the mayor, Lorents Burman. “Twenty floors high in wood? In Skellefteå?” Thanks to three teams of structural engineers, and the region’s prefabrication expertise, the timber tower now stands as a blueprint for a new generation of “plyscrapers”.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesig ... ds-tallest


Image
Jonas Westling
Tadasuke
Posts: 494
Joined: Tue Aug 17, 2021 3:15 pm
Location: Europe

Re: Wooden architecture

Post by Tadasuke »

I think it makes sense to use wood if it's in abundance. I'm not 100% sure about it, but looks like a good alternative to concrete, bricks and steel. I predict CLT and glulam to become more widely used as years go by.
Global economy doubles in product every 15-20 years. Computer performance at a constant price doubles nowadays every 4 years on average. Livestock-as-food will globally stop being a thing by ~2050 (precision fermentation and more). Human stupidity, pride and depravity are the biggest problems of our world.
Post Reply