Wooden Skyscrapers

[Ron Scott]

Stunning Wooden Skyscrapers Could Dominate the Skylines of the Future

ITProportal.com (October 3) - A new generation of engineers and architects are turning to one of man's earliest building materials to construct our most modern buildings. That's right: they're starting to build skyscrapers out of wood.

This isn't as crazy as it sounds on first consideration. While untreated beams of wood simply aren't strong enough to hold up the huge weight of high-rise buildings, a type of super-plywood has been developed to step up to the challenge. By gluing layers of low-grade softwood together to create timber panels, today's so-called "engineered timber" is more like what you'd find in Ikea flat-packed furniture than traditional sawn lumber. We've even got a nice moniker for the new breed of eco-friendly building: "plyscrapers".

The E- Forester

[WmFritz]

A wooden Sears Tower?

I wonder if the fire retardant  would be similar to steel buildings.

[timberlinetree]

That would boost demand for wood. Thanks for posting very interesting.

[longtime lurker]

Environmentally greater use of LVL and engineered beams would be good, but I couldn't see that translating to higher demand for we in the developed west.
All it takes to make engineered timber is machinery, raw timber and labour. Cheap labour would mean that the plants to do this were situated in China or South America or somewhere. . From here in Australia its cheaper to ship cants and flitches to China and import them back into Oz as overlay flooring then it is to produce it domesticly... so I don't see anywhere with a high wage base being the center of production on a big scale. And the worlds largest hardwood plantations are situated in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and China, so thats where the manufacturing plants will just about surely go.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Mans' got to be mad to stay in this business

[timberlinetree]

Man has to be mad to stay in this bissness? I'm in the business of producing wood and I'm not mad, or crazy ( so they tell me :D). I don't need to make a ton of money and like working hard.  Just a note but shipping cost are making local products more feasible.