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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 realDonaldTrump on Thursday June 08 2017, @08:16AM
It is my privilege to bring NAFTA up to date through renegotiation. I received calls from the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada asking to renegotiate NAFTA rather than terminate. I agreed, subject to the fact that if we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate NAFTA. We love Canada, wonderful people, wonderful country, but they have been very good about taking advantage of us through NAFTA. Relationships are good. A deal is very possible! I decided rather than terminating NAFTA, which would be a pretty big, you know, shock to the system, we will renegotiate. We're going to give renegotiation a good, strong shot. If we do not reach a fair deal for all, we will then terminate NAFTA. It's been very, very bad for our companies and for our workers, and we're going to make some very big changes, or we are going to get rid of NAFTA once and for all. Because Canada has been killing our economy. It's very unfair, what they're doing to our lumber industry. And maple syrup. Believe me, folks, they have a cartel up there. It's ruining, and I know Bernie is with me on this, it's ruining our industry in Vermont. Our Vermont maple syrup and maple sugar. They're killing our dairies too, folks. They put a 300% tariff on our dairy products. Worse than China. So I've put a tariff on their lumber, on their softwood lumber. 20%. Not a lot, but it's a start. Gives our industry a chance, a chance to compete. And you can see the result already, one of the results, is this great building going up in Portland. This building that they're building in Oregon. Great American wooden building. Not a Trump building, but in a way it is. I'm building it with the tariff. Building our lumber industry and all the great things that come from that. It's unfair what they're doing, the Canadians, very unfair. They've got huge, huge forests on their public lands, up there in Canada. And companies pay a fee to harvest the lumber, harvest it from those public lands. They just pay a fee and they can harvest. Unfair! Very different from what we do. Our lumber industry, they have to bid at an auction. When they want to harvest from the public lands, they bid. And it goes to the highest bidder. Not what they do in Canada. So I put on the tariff. And I'm going to renegotiate NAFTA. With Justin and Enrique. Great guys, but I want what's fair for the U.S.A. For my great American workers. Because I always, always put the American worker first. Not like them. Not like Crooked Hillary. Not like Rosie. Not like Kathy. I'm telling you, folks, we might have to go nuclear on this one. Use our nuclear option, to show them we mean business. Because the business of America is business. Have you heard that expression before? Because I haven't, I mean, I just came up with it right now. #MAGA