Why There Are No Timber Skyscrapers

Wood skyscrapers are literal nightmare if fire happens.

BILLONS DOLLAR

Yay Milwaukee has the biggrst timber tower 😅 and the building is amazing the ascent 😊

Hybrid towers are probably the most likely iteration of the next gen of these plyscrapers with strong concrete cores allowing towers to reach 150 or even 300m in height and I look forward to this since where I live in Alberta there are hundreds of thousands of km2 of forest that will either die from mountain pine beetles, burn in climate change or be wasted anyway... So we might as well solve the housing crisis with them!

I mean build and teach

I don't buy it. Can't we use some massive steel beams, and the rest wood, to dramaticly cut down on both materials and be more cost effective?

Building skyscrapers with wood is a fucking stupid idea. There are several reasons why

1) The amount of wood which can be sustainably harvested from forests is limited.

2) Wood is flammable.

3) Wood biodegrades over time.

BLM, antifa and Bamn are definitely on board with this idea...

Termites ?

It's really cool seeing Ascent featured in one of your videos! I'm from Milwaukee and one of my friends actually lives in Ascent. Being so close to Chicago, you don't really see Milwaukee talked about very often.

building them at all is just stupid. they are too tall and hard to maintain. just make more smaller buildings instead.

Currently the highest timber skyscraper is planned in Winterthur (Switzerland), which should be built by 2026 and 100m high with 32 stories. Anyone interested can search for "Rocket and Tigerli"

WHAT ABOUT THE TICKS

Saying that it can be "stronger than steel, pound for pound" means literally nothing when steel is so many times heavier and the same space constraints are in place for high rises... It's just a stupid concept with minimal potential

This is not a novel idea.
In San Frasisco for example there are many old timber high rise buildings due to the seismic envronment.
Nor is laminated engineered timer.
My quesion is whether the adhesive used in engineered timber is intumescent.

My new fav channel!

Limited height is really not a concern. Most of the buildings in the world don't even get close to 80 meters. I hope timber will be the new construction standard soon. The impact on emissions reduction would be massive!

One problem. Termites

It also could help against global warming by sequestering carbon dioxide.

its neither economical nor practical as seen from ancient buildings.

“Mass timber is far more sustainable than concrete or steel”

Nonsense. You think the world is running out of concrete or steel? When a steel building comes down, most of that steel will be recycled. All that epoxy wood mix will tossed or incinerated. Leave the damn forests alone.

Jet Fuel doesn't melt Timber beams

What about termites?

Then I will bulid a tallest timber skyscrapers.

Cool to see Milwaukee doing this. I think the Rust Belt of the US is really best poised for new development like this

I looked into the sustainability of various options as part of a RIBA Stage 2 report from a structural engineering perspective not that long ago. For the scheme we were looking at, timber actually came off worse from a sustainability point of view compared with concrete and steel. First was the volume of material required to achieve the same stiffness in beam and column elements. CLT and Glulam options required more material than their rivals. So although the kgCO2/kg of material was less for timber, it was offset by the volume required. Second, was fire. The building required a 2h fire rating and the treatments and materials being looked at were not exactly environmentally friendly in their own right. Thirdly, cradle to grave analysis was also unfavourable. Although timber construction kg to kg seems more sustainable (though note the first point above), sourcing timber is not exactly a zero carbon endeavour. It is not like steel or concrete where you are mining otherwise inert materials out the ground, harvesting trees removes the carbon sink. The volume of timber use in the project would not be able to be replaced within the lifespan of the building given the speed at which trees grow. Forthly, raw timber is not suitable in its own right. Standard C24 timber would not be suitable for a project that we were looking, or the video alluded to, so CLT or Glulam was considered. From the analysis we carried out, the resins and glues used to bind CLT and Glulam together are in their own right toxic to the environment, albeit inert when insitu. This leads to the fifth and final point we found - grave. Timber in the form of CLT and Glulam is not currently recyclable, and does not biodegrade in the same way as raw timber does. So unless we are able to re-engineer the materials to be reused on other projects, then they'll just be sitting on landfill. In fairness, this is a problem all materials have, concrete especially, but steel less so. Happy to discuss any of these points in case our previous studies have not shown something out there that could've been considered etc.

Milwaukee

The tallest timber apt bldg is

Termites would agree on having all buildings made with timber.

Is the video it's said that using timber "reduces" out impact, but we are still cutting down forrests and shit for mass producing timber -.-

Why not a superstructure of conventional materials, say a sky scraper with 5 stories between each cement floor and then fill in the floors with timber construction?

why not use FRP for building construction and what about termite infestation in timber skyscrapers.

Gotta say, i LOVE LOVE LOVE videos on wooden skyscrapers and hope you continue to update every time a record is broken. I have no idea if we will break 150-200 meters in my life time but I am excited to see the news from this channel first if it does happen!

Doesn’t even sound sustainable

Poor trees 🌲

I imagine people in the early 1900 talking about blimps and how wonderful they are up until the Hindenburg 🙃 this is what everyone in this chat saying it’s a wonderful idea and hope it takes off sounds like yikes…

Cost of wrapping wood in many layers of Sheetrock

What ?
Timber Apartement Skycraper ?
I dont wanna buy it !

I noticed a lots of skyscraper seem to be made almost entirely out of glass. Is that not the best material?

it is pretty funny that the largest wooden structures are still shorter than the tallest trees.

Concrete can last millennia, check the Roman constructions. Whereas wood lasts... how long?

COST $$$$$$$$$ Those columns and beams need to be custom made as opposed to standard steel components !

This Japanese building will be pretty cool.

Umm.. Just no... C'mon... The ideas may be cool and innovative, but I see these being catastrophic failures in the future especially for something super tall.

the b1m copycat?

Building a timber skyscraper using concrete core is like someone saying she’s a vegetarian but eats bacon.

Somethings happening and it'd be irrational to assume that wooden skyscrapers becoming common at the same time rationality is being interfered with by people trying to cause harm using a new technology aren't associated. No wooden skyscrapers until the rest of you know that cell receptors can be activated remotely and that cell receptor activation can be detected remotely.

I'm still very concerned about fire. How do these buildings compare to concrete ones? What does a 60-90 minute charring time mean? How does that compare to concrete? Making a video on that would be amazing

how long will wood buildings last? isnt the wood susceptible to rot?