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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: 1) by Turbidity on Thursday June 08 2017, @01:08AM (3 children)
I think there is a big constituency that favors some kind of free and humane housing situation for the houseless, but doesn't want it to produce the quality of life issues that are associated with large downtown tent camps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @04:00AM (2 children)
Then they'd support more comprehensive welfare, but they don't.
How much faith can one have in people who think solar panels on a house look ugly?
I think after I discorporate, I want to sit outside the Pearly Gates and just watch for Americans. I'd like to see their shock when they find out that the parable of the talents wasn't financial advice. That is, if they even were aware that the talent spoken of in that parable means a sum of money.
But I'm probably going to hell anyway, if I'm not already there and imagining all of this. Living around so many assholes has infected me. Mostly I want nothing more to do with this species.
Of course, I'm too much of a coward to kill myself on the contingency that I'm not already in hell but all suicide deaths go there. Might as well not give up all hope of the infinitesimally small chance the next life is any better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @11:01AM (1 child)
Only suiciders go to heaven.
Prove me wrong.
The afterlife is a human construct, just another filthy invention of the species you claim to hate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @03:15PM
Life is a human construct too, just another filthy invention of a species that would otherwise be called a virus based on its behavior.