Trees: The Future’s Favourite Building Material

Nevertheless, wood has a long track record of being a reliable building material.

Many buildings built before 1400 were made of wood, and even in Japan (a humid and seismically active area) many still stand today. A more recent example? The nine-storey residential building at 24 Murray Grove, in Hackney, London; it was completed in 2008 and is made of cross-laminated timber panels, a type of Mass Timber.

This project forms a base for some of the more ambitious projects, such as the LifeCycle Tower being designed by Creative Renewable Energy and Efficiency (CREE). When complete, the Austrian building will stand 30 storeys tall, competing for the title of the tallest wood structure in the world.

Current Canadian projects are slightly less ambitious. Green’s company, Michael Green Architecture (MGA), is working on the Wood Innovation and Design Centre in Prince George, B.C. The Centre will be the tallest wood structure in North America, standing at 27.5 metres or just over eight storeys, and according to Green’s website, will be a “stepping-stone for further innovation and scale that will continue to grow the wood story and industry.”

“Just as the automobile industry, energy sector and most other industries will see innovations that challenge the conventions of the way we will live in this century, the building industry must seek innovation in the fundamental materials that we choose to build with,” Green writes in his report.

“In a rapidly urbanizing world with an enormous demand to house and shelter billions of people in the upcoming decades we must find solutions for our urban environments that have a lighter climate impact than today’s incumbent major structural materials.”

And in this case, these innovative materials aren’t too space age; they can be found in most backyards.

Grace Kennedy is a journalism student at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia. . She has done freelance journalism on both the East and West coasts and has a particular interest in science journalism. You can find her LinkedIn here.