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from the sounds-like-heavy-duty-plywood dept.
Officials in Oregon have approved construction permits for the first all-wood high-rise building in the nation.
Construction on the 12-story building, called Framework, will break ground this fall in Portland's trendy and rapidly growing Pearl District and is expected to be completed by the following winter.
The decision by state and local authorities to allow construction comes after months of painstaking testing of the emerging technologies that will be used to build it, including a product called cross-laminated timber, or CLT.
To make CLT, lumber manufacturers align 2-by-4 boards in perpendicular layers and then glue them together like a giant sandwich before sliding the resulting panels into a massive press for drying. The resulting panels are stronger than traditional wood because of the cross-hatched layers; CLT can withstand horizontal and vertical pressures similar to those from a significant earthquake with minimal damage.
They are also lighter and easier to work with than regular timber, resulting in lower cost and less waste.
For this project, scientists at Portland State University and Oregon State University subjected large panels of CLT to hundreds of thousands of pounds of pressure and experimented with different methods for joining them together.
Could cross-laminated timber revive the timber industry?
Previously: Can You Build A Safe, Sustainable Skyscraper Out Of Wood?
The Case for Wooden Skyscrapers
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday June 07 2017, @11:19PM (3 children)
They built (or are building for completion this year) a 14-story one in Norway. Overall it's starting to be a eco-friendly-trend up here in the north of the world. Considering that Oregon and Canada and such places are more or less on the same Longitude this probably makes sense all over.
http://treetsameie.no/ [treetsameie.no]
http://www.timberdesignandtechnology.com/treet-the-tallest-timber-framed-building-in-the-world/ [timberdesignandtechnology.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @11:56PM (1 child)
Pretty sure you meant latitude, meaning they are all approximately the same level of northness with respect to the equator . . . ( though Oregon is a tad south of Canada )
Longitude is the measure of eastness or westness with respect to the prime meridian . . .
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Thursday June 08 2017, @05:10AM
And I think you will find that Oregon is a long way south of Norway.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday June 08 2017, @10:33AM
The Gulf Stream makes a difference too. 30 ⁰C to be exact. So while it may be freezing in Canada, it might be quite okay on the Norwegian coast on the same north-south degree.