Six years ago architect Michael Green took the stage at a TED conference and called for an global era of wood-framed skyscrapers.
Some were skeptical.
“People really thought I was an idiot,” said Green in a recent interview.
“I got constant comments from my peers just saying this guy didn’t know what he was talking about, this will never happen, the construction industry doesn’t change. And look at it now, it’s made a massive amount of change.”
Almost non-existent a decade ago, tall wood buildings have defied skeptics and are sprouting up in cities across Canada as the wood industry sees opportunity, developers embrace new designs and momentum builds to reduce the heavy carbon footprint of concrete and steel in construction as the urgency of the battle to combat climate change grows. The 18-storey Brock Commons Tallwood House is considered the world?s tallest mass-timber building, for now. Photo by Michael Elkan.
“For me it all comes back to the carbon story. It all comes back to choosing renewables to build our cities,” said Green, principal at Vancouver-based Michael Green Architecture.
Wood offers the benefit of being made of captured carbon and of reducing the need for concrete, which the International Energy Agency estimates is responsible for seven per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
But it was the housing market collapse a decade ago that helped prompt B.C. to start promoting the use of new timber buildin...