In the Future, Wood Is the Only Material to Build Skyscrapers, Not

A new project promises to turn Chicago from the city of metal and concrete into a city of skyscrapers made of wood. This article explains the key facts and context behind pressed wood.

Key Facts About Pressed Wood

Chicago is famous for being a city of metal and concrete. In 1956, John HanCook center, built in Chicago, cost about 5 million pounds of aluminum, enough metal to produce 96 tourist buses. Five years later, the 1400-foot-tall Sears Tower skyscraper was built with 176 million pounds of steel.

Model of a 80-storey rotary-shaped building of the River Beech built entirely of oak.

A research project between Cambridge University, Perkins + Will architects and engineers at Thornton Tomasetti plans to design a new high-rise architecture built entirely of wood. The architects came up with the idea of building an 80-storey fully-shaped, oak-shaped building called River Beech.

River Beech is built from two towers connected to each other through the gates.

The ambition to build completely wooden skyscrapers existed several years ago. In London, designers have proposed plans for a wooden skyscraper called Oakwood Tower. In Stockholm, plans to build a skyscraper high-rise building in the city with a height of 436 feet are also underway. A completely wooden baseball stadium is also under construction in the UK.

Historically, wood used to be a key construction material, but due to its flammability, the risk of causing great fires, it was gradually replaced by other materials such as steel and concrete.

Why Pressed Wood Matters

However, pressed wood one of the new inventions in recent times makes the wood material attractive again. Pressed wood is a kind of hard wood made up of different pieces of wood glued. Combined with the precise automatic production process, this new material allows architects to build wooden buildings with unimaginable heights.

Project of building a wooden building in the Netherlands by PLP Architecture.

In addition, the environmental properties also make the wood more attractive because the wood acts as a carbon dioxide lock box, isolating excess CO2 from the air.

Currently, the world's tallest wooden building is called Brock Commons, an 18-storey dormitory located in Vancouver. The building looks like any other high rise steel or concrete building and will be completed in the next few weeks. The foundation is built from identical wooden modules that look like oversized Lego games.

The 7-storey building is built of T3 wood.

Dorm Brock Commons.

The interior of Brock Commons building is also made entirely of wood.

Brock Commons Building is a testament to the use of wood in building relatively high buildings over a fast and economically feasible period.

Project of building a 80-storey wooden building.

Oakwood Tower skyscraper in London looks from afar.

A 436-foot wooden building plan in Stockholm.

Wood is both light and durable, not as hard as steel or concrete, so wood can create more friendly structures in the future.