Our Mission
Wood For Future
Not an architectural cause, but a climatic one
NOT AN ARCHITECTURAL CAUSE, BUT A CLIMATIC ONE
First and foremost, we need to talk about climate change. As we all should know, the world is facing the threat of climate change and it is apparently losing this fight. According to Our World in Data, during the last 20 years, we emitted globally approximately 35 billion tons of C02 into the atmosphere – which is hard to compare to any sizable object - and figures will tend to increase during the next couple of decades1. Out of this unfathomable scenario, about 4,5 billion tons, or 14% of the total production of carbon dioxide, is produced due to the extraction of natural resources for building materials – largely attributed to the production of cement, steel, and ceramics 2.
At the same time and pace, the “demand for building materials is enormous worldwide and is expected to increase strongly in the coming decades, as a result of population growth, rising prosperity, and increasing dwelling sizes per capita and household” 3. According to the estimations by the UN, by 2050 ten billion people will be habiting the world, a growth by 2,7 billion, which would require, with a simple mathematic equation, one NYC being built every three months for the next thirty years.
As part of the built environment industry, we as architects, builders, and sustainability advocates substantially need to develop and create new technologies and make use of natural materials that are friendly to our environment, to our climate, and to ourselves. We need to make a shift as a global and collective community towards use, production and maintenance of a more sustainable, renewable, recyclable and less C02 emissive environment, in order to protect and prevent our planet from colapsing. In this regard, this is what Wood for Future is about.
To help tackle these issues, we would like to talk about a “old” material that is revolutionizing the building sector: wood.
C02
35 bi
Tons of C02 were released into the atmosphere in the last 20 years.
BUILDING MATERIALS
14%
Of the total production of C02 is emitted by the extraction of building materials.
POPULATION
10 bi
people will be living in the world by 2050
YEARLY GROWTH
4 NYC
are needed per year to accommodate the growth in population worldwide - for the next 30 years.
Wood for Future
Not an architecture cause, but a climatic one
Manifesto
SOME ADVANTAGES OF USING WOOD
EFFICIENCY IN CONSTRUCTION
Prefabrication & speed
Building with wood allows construction to be faster and cleaner 16. For instance, rather than having the materials being casted in situ, as with some conventional construction methods, much of what concerns the fabrication of mass timber is prefabricated at the factory – exactly to specifications following the guidelines from architects and builders. This practice facilitates to a much cleaner construction environment, reduces unwanted waste and project timeline.
FIRE SAFETY
It is everyone’s first question about mass timber: what about fire?
Many people still think of mass timber, such as CLT, as kindling. Large, solid, and compacted volumes of wood, on the other hand, are extremely difficult to ignite. In the event of fire, the mass timber's outer layers will char in a predictable pattern, effectively self-extinguishing and shielding the inside, allowing it to maintain structural integrity for several hours even under strong fire17.
Michael Green, an award-winning architect and leader in wood construction and innovation says that “most people don’t realize that steel is terrible in fire… Once it reaches a yielding temperature, it becomes highly unpredictable and its done. Your building has to be torn down.”18 With wood, differently, one can predict better that burning time of the material and therefore have more time to escape.
AESTHETICS & WELL BEING
The presence of wood within buildings characterizes nature’s fingerprint within the built environment and also it may influence our wellness and well-being 12. Literature on the biophilia hypothesis 13 suggests that humans have a natural desire to interact with nature.
Research conducted by Ed Suttie, research director in the Centre for Sustainable Products at BRE, illustrates that human exposure to nature is proven to lower pressure, heart rate, and levels of aggression 14. Suttie adds “In Japan, the medical profession has for decades prescribed shinrin-yoki (taking a walk in the forest, sometimes called “forest bathing”) as part of the recovery process for a number of mental health complications.”
For instance, a report conducted within Australian workplaces prepared for Forest & Wood Products 15Australia by Andrew Knox and Howard Parry-Husbands under the company Pollinate shows that exposure to wood leads to higher levels of concentration, worker satisfaction, and increased productivity (check report for all benefits). The growing empirical evidence of these qualities should enable future refinement of well-being measures in sustainability decision-making, such as BREEAM and LEED. Improving the quality and environment lawmakers could bring the wood business to a totally different level.
"The choice of materials we surround ourselves with could affect our well-being”
Dr. Ed Suttie
Director at BRE
Timber Concert Hall in Nuremberg
Gilles Retsin + Markus Albrecht
Regular timber taken directly from sustainable forests isn’t malleable like steel or concrete, it isn’t strong enough to build high and is more expensive to build7. However, a new technique of utilizing wood has put it back into the spotlight, and is known as structural timber, or "mass timber". “In a nutshell, it is gluing softwood fragments together to make bigger pieces, usually conifers like pine, spruce, or fir, but sometimes deciduous species like birch, ash, and beech.” 8 Mass timber is an umbrella term that covers products of various sizes and functions, like glue-laminated beams (GLULAM), laminated veneer lumber (LVL), nail-laminated timber (NLT), and dowel-laminated timber (DLT). But the most common and most familiar form of mass timber, the one that has opened up the newest architectural possibilities, is cross-laminated timber or CLT.
BACK TO THE
FUTURE
Have you never asked yourself why humanity didn’t continue to build buildings and cities with wood as they did for millennia all over the world? Due to major fires, that happened over the last 500 +years, that hit catastrophically great metropolises such as London, Amsterdam, New York, and Chicago, wood was considered unsafe and unreliable material. Especially in the early twentieth century, when the era of modern steelmaking and concrete had arrived and allowed architects and builders to build higher than ever before.
So why after more than a century of concrete and steel are some architects proposing a “return to wood”?
Well, as you read this text it should become clearer the problems that the current materials have created. Wood can be grown sustainably and is about a quarter of weight lighter than concrete4. Most crucially, as trees grow, they absorb Carbon Dioxide from the air and lock it into themselves. Wooden buildings have the potential to become a global carbon sink5.
According to the Potsdam institute6, just 0.5% of new buildings would be constructed with timber by 2050. Nonetheless, this figure could be driven up to 10% if mass timber manufacturing increases accordingly.
TIMBER CONCERT HALL FOR NUREMBERG
Gilles Retsin + Markus Albrecht
"For the future, building with wood needs to become a norm, and not an exception.”
D|W
DENSIFICATION
According to the United Nations8, 68% of the world's population is expected to live in cities by 2050. This is an increase by 2.7 billion in comparison to today’s number. This fact alone will imply immensely in the way that people inhabit cities and, most importantly, in which kind of dwelling they will reside.
As a result of the latter, the global demand for building materials is expected to boost in the coming decades, as a consequence of population growth, rising prosperity, and increasing dwelling sizes per capita and household 9. However, such a construction boom, though, will be a hindrance to tackling climate change, mainly because making steel and concrete, the most common building materials, produces around 8% of the world’s anthropogenic carbon-dioxide emissions.
This reality places cities at the center of the global climate change challenge, requiring them to pursue solutions and mitigation methods: which again, brings us again back to wood10. has many attractions as a construction material and it is considered to be a game-changer. A timber building is much lighter when compared to a reinforced concrete structure. This factor alone can allow foundations to be much smaller as well as allow hybrid structures to extend existing buildings upwards, due to their lightweight properties.
When it comes to using wood for densification two major trends can be distinguished and can also redefine the way people view wood as a structural resource and also inhabit cities.
Nikken Sekkei Architects
The World's tallest woodscraper
Check interview here
Wooden skyscrapers have for already a few years taken space in the architecture media realm. Wooden towers can be spotted in many countries already, especially in the Scandinavian countries, The Netherlands, the United States, and Canada. The highest one is located in Norway, The Mjøstårnet building, designed by Voll Arkitekter and built by Molven Limtre (as a turnkey subcontractor), tops 85 meters and is built using local wood resources and is basically fully constructed out of different types of engineered wood.
Furthermore, ambitious projects are on-demand and their promise is beyond expectations. One of the world’s most experienced architect practices from Japan, Nikken Sekkei, founded in 1904, proposed a conceptual and ambitious project in Tokyo that raises 350 meters above the ground.
In addition, the extension of the Barbican in London, designed by PLP Architects, intends to construct a 250-meter tower using CLT as the main construction material.
A number of other projects are on the way and if they come out as they are planned, they will look fantastic.
W350 Project
Nikken Sekkei Architects
SKYSCRAPERS
Sigurd Larsen Architects
Interview
Word's tallest skyscrapper
PARASITE CITIES
DACKIES: Adding wooden housing on existing rooftops in Berlin
Sigurd Larsen Architects
The concept of urban heightening is no news for the Parisian architecture firm Malka Architecture. 3BOX is an urban experiment nested on the edge of the river Seine in Paris. The building is able to propose green housing 40% below the real estate market price. Besides, regardless of your taste for architecture, it’s an exciting solution for the demand of the developments.
“Wood Lightweight construction techniques in wood are also the most modern way to tackle densification in the big cities. Wood is incredibly light compared with other traditional construction materials, which is of major importance for rooftop extensions. With lightweight construction techniques in wood, housing can be built on top of existing buildings, in wedges between two buildings, and on ground that was not previously considered viable. Many local authorities have already discovered the potential that this offers. It is not surprising that industrial construction in wood is considered the building method of the future!” Swedish Wood
"Wood has a fantastic potential to build over the city as another layer, as it is a light material”
Dr.Maarten Hajer
On the other hand, in an era of skyscrapers, the high rise seems to be the logical solution for tackling and enduring densification. We as designers should also be interested in rethinking what is established, analyzing the properties of the new material(s), and investigating (their) alternative uses. For instance, wood is much lighter than concrete and steel, therefore it can offer different solutions for our cities
In the interview conducted with Professor Maarten Hajer, a distinguished professor of and Director of the Urban Futures Studio at the University of Utrecht, in The Netherlands, and also is the former Director of the Netherlands Assessment Agency (PBL – Planbureau voor Leefomgevening), he suggests that the solution is not singular and that “wooden skyscrapers are the leftover of the 20th century.” He questions if “the idea of reaching for the sky is the best way of applying wood? I am not sure if that will hold. If you think about sociology, we are reminded that at the time car was introduced, the carriage made way for the car. The first models from Mercedes remarkably look like carriage (if you are curious, such an example can be categorized as part of what Gottfried Semper described as the stoffwescheltheory 11 – comment by Design Warehouse). In architecture, something similar is happening. Basically, now, it is about replacing concrete… But later we will realize that there’s a more logical application in another way. Wood has a fantastic potential to build over the city as another layer, as it is a light material. It is often possible to build several layers on top of the existing building, which is not possible by concrete”.
Mjøstårnet
Voll Architects
Urban Village
Effekt Architects + Space 10
DACKIES: Adding wooden housing on existing rooftops in Berlin
Sigurd Larsen Architects
3 BOX
Malka Architecture
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Harvey, F. (2021, April 20). Carbon emissions to soar in 2021 by second highest rate in history. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/20/carbon-emissions-to-soar-in-2021-by-second-highest-rate-in-history
2. Harvey, F. (2021, April 20). Carbon emissions to soar in 2021 by second highest rate in history. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/20/carbon-emissions-to-soar-in-2021-by-second-highest-rate-in-history
3. Dassen, T., & Hajer, M. (2015). Smart about Cities: Visualising the Challenge for 21st Century Urbanism. pg. 139) nai010 publishers.
4.
5. Marteen Hajer, interview
6. Buildings can become a global CO2 sink if made out of wood instead of cement and steel — Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. (n.d.). Pik Potsdam. Retrieved August 17, 2021, from https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/buildings-can-become-a-global-co2-sink-if-made-out-of-wood-instead-of-cement-and-steel
7. Roberts, D. (2020, January 15). Sustainable building: The hottest new material is, uh, wood. Vox. https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/1/15/21058051/climate-change-building-materials-mass-timber-cross-laminated-clt
7. IDEM
8. Elmjid, F. (2018, May 16). 68% of the world population projected to live in urban areas by 2050, says UN. UN DESA | United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanization-prospects.html
9. Dassen, T., & Hajer, M. (2015). Smart about Cities: Visualising the Challenge for 21st Century Urbanism. pg. 139) nai010 publishers.
10. Ribeiro, H. V., Rybski, D., & Kropp, J. P. (2019). Effects of changing population or density on urban carbon dioxide emissions. Nature Communications, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11184-y
1. Harvey, F. (2021, April 20). Carbon emissions to soar in 2021 by second highest rate in history. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/20/carbon-emissions-to-soar-in-2021-by-second-highest-rate-in-history
2. Harvey, F. (2021, April 20). Carbon emissions to soar in 2021 by
11. Moravánszky, A. (n.d.). Stoffwechsel. Die dargestellte Wirklichkeit der Architektur. https://www.gta.arch.ethz.ch/habilitationen/stoffwechsel-die-dargestellte-wirklichkeit-der-architektur. Retrieved August 18, 2021, from https://www.gta.arch.ethz.ch/habilitationen/stoffwechsel-die-dargestellte-wirklichkeit-der-architektur
12,13 & 14. Trada, & Suttie, E. (2017). Is wood good for your health. Trada. https://www.houtnatuurlijkvannu.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/7-wellbeing-in-buildings_locked.pdf
15. Pollinate, Knox, A., & Parry-Husbands, H. (2018). Workplaces: Wellness+ Wood = Productivity. Pollinate. https://lamellammc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Workplaces-Wellness-Wood-Productiverty-pdf.
16 Smedley, T. (n.d.). Could wooden buildings be a solution to climate change? BBC Future. Retrieved August 18, 2021, from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190717-climate-change-wooden-architecture-concrete-global-warming
17. Hasburgh, L. E.; Bourne, K. J.; Dagenais, C.; Osborne, L.; Roy-Poirier, A.: Fire performance of mass-timber encapsulation methods and the effect of encapsulation on char rate of cross-laminated timber, CD-ROM Proceedings of the World Conference on Timber Engineering (WCTE 2016), August 22-25, 2016, Vienna, Austria, Eds.: J. Eberhardsteiner, W. Winter, A. Fadai, M. Pöll, Publisher: Vienna University of Technology, Austria, ISBN: 978-3-903039-00-1
https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/pdf2016/fpl_2016_hasburgh002.pdf
18. Upper Canada. (n.d.). Upper Canada Forest Products – UCFP - News: Industry News - The Hottest New Thing in Sustainable Building is Wood. Https://Www.Ucfp.Com/News/Upper-Canada-Industry-News-the-Hottest-New-Thing-in-Sustainable-Building-Is-Wood/.Retrieved August 18, 2021, from https://www.ucfp.com/news/upper-canada-industry-news-the-hottest-new-thing-in-sustainable-building-is-wood/