https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5XsqauBCX4

For those of you who understand Norwegian or are willing to use Google Translate, there's an article about the building here[1], which also mentions some of the same projects as the Guardian article.

[1]: http://www.bt.no/nyheter/lokalt/Canada-sikler-pa-bergensk-ve...

But imagine city where you don't have just few wooden skyscrapers, but like 90% of the buildings are wood. Then earthquake hits. Now the sprinklers don't work anymore, and the fire can spread from building to building. Whole cities burning was relatively common before 20th century, partially because they we're mostly built from wood.

>"So wood structures make sense in seismic-heavy regions, especially in the Pacific Northwest, where a 9.0 magnitude earthquake is expected to hit in the next 50 years."

>"Ideally there comes a day when people can choose between mass timber, steel and concrete. We don’t see mass timber replacing those, it just becomes another option when certain parameters and goals apply to a project."

I hope these cancel each others out. And there will be regular buildings in between to act as firewall of sort.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1906_San_Francisco_earthquake#...

Something like 30% wood might be the best. But it creates interesting problem, who gets to live in a wooden building? Who gets to build one?

While it's strength is lower than steel, for buildings less than 10 storeys tall it's a very good choice, especially if you can do the lower floors and basements with steel and concrete.

The article also notes that this kind of wood is "fire resistant." It also says that, "But the road to approve CLT as a sound building material in the US has been arduous, with engineers and architects working to prove that it complies with codes and is resistant to fire and seismic events." Despite that, though, it still seems like fire is a threat. Is there something I'm missing? Are the other materials in the buildings sufficiently fire-retardant to make the issue a small or unimportant one?

I'd imagine it would go other way around, as knots are typically the weak spots. And with bigger structure knots would be averaged out.

Now if you scale that up, the likelihood of having faulty glue plane could go up. It still doesn't sound like static stress problem. More like fatigue causing delamination.

I'm still bit suspicious because this would be too easy to explain.

Wood buildings are significantly cheaper to maintain. Significantly cheaper to build (at least in Canada).

The down side of wood is that it doesn't handle wetness well and it gets damaged more easily. For larger projects concrete starts getting financially competitive also partially due to the fact that it's more friendly to just leave exposed while you're building. You can't really do that with wood. Even the OP's original building was being built in sections.

Also, wood isn't as strong as steel + concrete. So if property prices are really high concrete and steel are going to win just so you can build higher and lose less space to structural members.

> The down side of wood is that it doesn't handle wetness well

So, vapour barriers are a Very Big Deal then, right ? Or do we have better solutions to the wood/water problem ?

I was going to ask "will this bear out over 50, 100(+) years", but I realized I'm putting my desire of how long a building should last... so, question: How long should a (say, 4-10 story apt) last ? Can we get 100 years out of modern one that are being put up ? What do people in the industry punt-around as a figure for the life of a building ?

I have a great love of wood -- it seems to work in compression, and in tension, has interesting failure modes, seems easy to work with and is versatile... but I do like the perceived permanence of concrete. Makes for interesting judgment of buildings...

And yeah, moisture is a really big deal. Most of building science is around moisture and heat. Humans and building materials don't like getting too wet.

Interesting. I always thought of it as (relatively) delicate.

Link: http://news.ubc.ca/2015/10/01/new-ubc-student-residence-to-b...

I'm trying to figure out where this product fits into the construction, as well. I'm reasonably familiar with the general principles of stick-built and post & beam wooden construction, structural steel construction, traditional brick and masonry, and poured concrete. Do you just put these panels up as full walls? Does it still need an internal structure, or do the panels have sufficient rigidity? What do you do for insulation?

For insulation, the standard approach seems to be using rigid panels on the outside, either rock wool or foam. This stuff is a good bit more expensive than stick built construction, so I figure they count the expense of outside-only insulation (vs. batts or cellulose between the studs) is just a cost that goes with it. If you're building high-end, you may as well insulate high-end.

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03bjqk4

If you bring piece of wood indoors and let it dry, it's water content will drop to about ~17%. If you take it outside and hang it somewhere so that it catches rain and then dries, it's moisture content will average about ~20% in most places on earth. Wood has evolved to do capillary action. This means it's very good at drying, but it's also very good at staying wet if there is moisture around.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capillary_action

Most wood eating fungi need moisture content of at least 30%. And this has to be long term, wet week doesn't do anything. But there is fungus called dry rot, that can cope with 20%. This leaves you practically no buffer, as the indoors natural is 17%. The catch here is that dry rot needs certain minerals to ever start growing. Cement and mortar have these minerals. If you build effective barrier between cement and wood structures and keep the moisture below 30%, you don't have to worry about rot ever.

Insects are another problem. But it's rare that you get insects if you didn't get rot first. In those rare occasions, there has been some visible defect in the surface of the wood. Or alternatively some very infested thing nearby. Regular paint goes long way.

UK has traditionally had lots of problems in build quality. Mostly because they didn't take into account dry rot.

Source: Deterioration and preservation of timber in buildings. G. A. Scott 1968. And no, this info has not dated since 60's.

The plastic film stuff has been tested pretty well for current structures. But as the insulation thickness increases there might not be big enough pressure gradient across the structure.

Concrete does not get a pass though. Here in Finland we have had bit thicker insulation for a while. Even if you don't get wood rotting, you can get mold. That ruins indoor air quality.

If your roof leaks badly enough, even steel is unsafe: http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/elliot-lake-how-could-so-...

Ideally you want a really good roofing system, tip-top windows installed with the best practices, good walls with vented cavities behind the siding and a good roof overhang to protect the walls and windows against the rain.

http://www.t3northloop.com/

Given the amount I keep hearing about the concept I'm guessing it'll be a lot more common in just a couple of years.

Then I saw some modern architects using natural materials (wood and stone) and realized that much of my antagnoism was due to the synthetic materials they were using, and less the style itself.

There is something deeply humanizing about wood and stone.

A two-second Google search puts actual numbers on this: https://fpinnovations.ca/media/factsheets/Documents/cross-la... (page 8). Seems a standard suspended-ceiling type arrangement provides damping as good as a well-built concrete structure (by comparison to http://www.aia.org/practicing/awards/AIAB025071).

HN comments seem to have a bad tendency to dismiss interesting and potentially cool ideas out of hand (especially about anything that isn't software) by citing the first difficulty that comes to mind, without doing even a little bit of research. As though the many highly qualified engineers putting this stuff together wouldn't have thought of something as basic as sound insulation.

Edit: page 9 in the parent link addresses this. Extremely poor vibration dampening.

I agree and was just pointing out something similar in another HN discussion. It's detrimental to do the easy thing and shoot down innovations rather than the creative work of imagining the possibilities. Most of the tech people are using to post these comments, and probably most of their employers and YC members, wouldn't exist if they listened to the naysayers.

It's also a waste of my time to read the noise of yet another naysayer. I thought that behavior was explicitly discouraged at HN. Sigh.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_floor

It can be done with wood too. But I don't know how effective that is.

how is this different than any other material? or anything manufactured, for that matter?

fwiw, glu-lam wood has been used in huge structures for decades, and it works fine.

That said, I'm not sure if this style is appropriate for Manhattan today. We don't need more ten-story buildings in Chelsea for multi-millionaires, we need more 50-story buildings (still for millionaires, but hey).