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White Arkitekter's new mass timber tower opens as the world's third tallest wooden building

2021-09-28T17:23:00-04:00

A new Swedish tower is pushing boundaries for mass timber design in an effort to create a “public living room” for one small city just south of the Arctic Circle.

The Sara Cultural Centre is the second tallest wooden building in any Scandinavian country and the third tallest in the world behind Voll Arkitekter’s 18-story, 280-foot Mjøstårnet near Oslo and the 276-foot HoHo Tower in Vienna.

Located in Skellefteå, the 246-foot Centre plays host to an art gallery, museum, library, and theater in a multi-volume carbon-negative building that also features welcoming amenities like a high-rise restaurant, hotel, and spa.

Image courtesy White Arkitekter

Two different construction systems were developed by White Arkitekter to complete the tower using a combination of glue-laminated columns and beams together with CLT cores, modules, shear walls that work together to distribute the shear load using as little material as possible. According to the architect, the combination of the two systems...

17-story wooden high-rise proposed in Tokyo

2020-11-02T13:30:00-05:00

Mitsui Fudosan and Takenaka Corporation are planning to build a 17-story wood-frame office tower in Tokyo’s Nihonbashi district. With a proposed height of 70 meters, this would be the tallest wooden building in Japan.

Related: A much taller, 70-story wood-framed skyscraper was proposed by Sumitomo Forestry and Nikken Sekkei in 2018 to be built in Tokyo's Marunouchi business district by the year 2041.

Milwaukee's wooden skyscraper just got a little bit taller

2019-09-25T18:30:00-04:00

"Having built projects in the U.S. will eventually take away the novelty and reinforce that tall wood buildings are held to the same standards for safety and performance as buildings made from other materials," Parsons told Construction Dive. "This is happening in Europe, where tall wood buildings have been built for many years."

The Milwaukee Plan Commission and the Neighborhoods and Development Committee recently approved changes to New Land Enterprises' Ascent project, a wood tower that is due to be the tallest of its kind in North America, Construction Dive reports

The Korb + Associates-designed tower was initially planned to be 21 stories, but current changes put the tower at 23 stories. Under the tower's current design, it will provide 231 residences and 310 parking spaces.