Archinect - News

'World’s Tallest Timber Building' now officially ratified after CTBUH height criteria update

2019-03-14T18:20:00-04:00

[CTBUH] has verified the completion of Mjøstårnet, a mixed-use building in Brumunddal, Norway that now holds the unique title of the “World’s Tallest Timber Building.” At 85.4 meters, it is also the third-tallest building in Norway and the country’s tallest with mixed functions. This news coincides with the amendment of the CTBUH Height Criteria – the official guidelines upon which tall buildings are measured – to include timber as a recognized structural material.

The 18-story wooden structure Mjøstårnet (Mjøsa Tower) near Oslo, Norway popularly earned the title "World’s Tallest Timber Building" back in September 2018 when it structurally topped out. But it wasn't until a recent update of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat's height criteria guidelines, that what truly constituted a 'timber' structural system was clearly defined.

The revised criteria for timber structures now requires that "both the main vertical/lateral structural elements and the floor spanning system must be constructed from timber. An ‘all-timber’ structure may include the use of localized non-timber connections between timber elements. A building of timber construction with a floor system of concrete planks, or concrete slab on top of timber beams, is still considered a ‘timber’ structure, as the concrete elements are not acting as the primary structure."

The case for more wooden buildings

2019-01-07T15:07:00-05:00

Governments can help nudge the industry to use more wood, particularly in the public sector—the construction industry’s biggest client. That would help wood-building specialists achieve greater scale and lower costs. Zero-carbon building regulations should be altered to take account of the emissions that are embodied in materials. This would favour wood as well as innovative ways of producing other materials.

The Economist compares the environmental impact of the industrialized world's most common building materials, cement and steel, with that of carbon-trapping wood, and how an earnest effort to reach the emission goals outlined in the Paris Climate Agreement cannot ignore building with timber on a much, much grander scale.

Russia's historic wooden airports are still in use today

2018-09-12T14:47:00-04:00

This is the era of the glass and steel airport. As if made from the same mold, shiny, glittering terminals have become a status symbol for any city with aspirations. But all of this is a world away from the remoteness of Russia's Arctic regions and the Siberian wilderness [...] built in the mid-20th century when the Soviet Union saw in air transport a way to expand the state's reach to every corner of its territory, even if that meant little more than a dirt runway and a radio shack.

A collection of Russia's historic wooden airports are the antithesis of our current experience of most urban airports. Rather than immense glass and steel constructions, these old structures are made of simplistic wooden designs.

While many may look dilapidated, several are still in operation with regular airline service. Take a look at some of these unique transportation hubs below:

Mar-Kyuyel' Airport, located in Russia's Far East. Image: Russian Platinum.

Solovki Airport, located near Russia's Solovetsky Islands. Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Seymchan Airport, located in Magadan Oblast, Russia. Image: Sever.Aero.

Mezen Airport, located in Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia. Image: Shutterstock.

Check out the full collection of Russia's wooden airports here.

The world's tallest timber tower structurally tops out in Norway

2018-09-06T14:24:00-04:00

Construction workers yesterday installed the final beam at Mjøstårnet (Mjøsa Tower), a wooden skyscraper project in the Norwegian town of Brumunddal, just north of Oslo. Now structurally topped out, the 18-story structure stands 85.4 meters tall and is officially the world's tallest timber tower.

Image: Mjøstårnet on Facebook

Once fully completed in March 2019, the tower designed by Trondheim-based Voll Arkitekter will house apartments, a hotel, and offices on 11,300 square meters (121,630 square feet).

Image: Mjøstårnet on Facebook

Photo: Anti / Jens Haugen, image via Mjøstårnet on Facebook

Image: Mjøstårnet on Facebook

Learn more about Mjøsa Tower in Archinect's previous coverage.

Record setting 12-story timber tower slated for downtown Portland gets the axe

2018-07-17T19:52:00-04:00

In 2015, the U.S. Department of Agriculture decided to run a pilot program to support two tall wood demonstration projects in order to test the potential of the increasingly popular building material. The first was a 10-story residential tower in Chelsea designed by SHoP. The second, a 12-story high rise slated for downtown Portland's Pearl District that would've been the tallest building in the country to use cross-laminated timber.

The New York project was scrapped last year, made unfeasible by a cooled-off real estate market and regulations prohibiting wooden towers over six stories that would've required onerous finagling. The deal to build Oregon's record-setting wooden tower, though, was still moving forward.

Designed by the Portland-based firm LEVER Architecture, the project had received a promising amount of support and pledge of public dollars. Money from the USDA's Tall Wood Building award helped fund testing and research; the Portland Housing Bureau had promised $6 milli...

The world's tallest wooden tower is being built in Norway

2017-08-31T12:24:00-04:00

With an expected completion date of March 2019, the 18-story, 80-meter-tall-plus building in Brumunddal, Norway known as the Mjøsa Tower will soon become the world's tallest wooden structure, a coveted title among those designers who favor wood over more traditional tall building materials. Designed by Voll Arkitekter, the Mjøsa Tower is on track to supersede the previous wooden record holder, the Brock Commons Student Housing building at the University of British Columbia, which topped out at a stately 53 meters in height.

Image: Metsä Wood / Voll Arkitekter

Wood has numerous advantages over oft-used concrete and steel: for one, the construction time can be cut approximately in half due to easy prefabrication and the overall lighter weight of the materials. Surprisingly, one of wood's advantages as a tall building material lies in its ability to withstand fires, at least when compared with the tendency of steel to melt down during an all-consuming blaze. As the site's general contr...

Perkins+Will proposes 80-story timber skyscraper in Chicago

2016-10-13T13:56:00-04:00

As part of its ongoing Riverline community project, Perkins+Will has proposed an entirely conceptual 80-story, 300 unit residential skyscraper made from timber called the River Beech Tower.

Announced 145 years after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, this proposed tower would feature a massive central atrium and an aluminum veneer over the exposed diagonal lattice timber beams. While engineers say it is structurally possible, Perkins+Will is currently trying to figure out just how much it would cost to build.

The River Beech Tower distinguishes itself by being one of the tallest wooden structures currently proposed; for a round-up of other tall wooden structures, take a look at these recent news stories:

Temporary wooden ferris-wheel hotel proposed for the Seine River

2015-10-30T21:18:00-04:00

French architects [SCAU] are planning to build a 'water wheel hotel' on the banks of the Seine, which resembles the London Eye but with 'room capsules' that would rotate constantly. ...[However,] the wheel hotel is not intended to be a permanent structure. 'It is made of wood and it will only take four days to assemble or dismantle it, so it could be transported by barge and re-erected elsewhere on the river' [said Maxime Barbier of SCAU]

Vancouver architect Michael Green proposes 35-story wooden skyscraper for Paris

2015-06-05T12:31:00-04:00

Vancouver architect Michael Green is proposing to alter the iconic Parisian skyline — by building the world's tallest wooden building...'Just as Gustave Eiffel shattered our conception of what was possible a century and a half ago, this project can push the envelope of wood innovation with France in the forefront,' said Green in a press release.

More about the project here.

France Mandates "Green Roofs" for all new buildings

A New Use for the Eiffel Tower

Vancouver is the latest city to announce 100% green energy goals

Canadian Wood Council pushes for more wood architecture excellence in the latest Wood Design Awards

2014 was the tallest year by far for skyscrapers, CTBUH finds

New photos of E. Fay Jones' Thorncrown Chapel unveiled to mark 35th anniversary

2015-05-19T15:29:00-04:00

Concealed within the forest landscape of the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas, the acclaimed Thorncrown Chapel will celebrate its 35th anniversary this summer. Designed by E. Fay Jones, who was commissioned by retired schoolteacher Jim Reed, the 48 ft. tall chapel boasts 425 windows and over 6,000 sq. ft of glass, and it became widely recognized for its organic "Ozark Gothic" style when it first opened on July 10, 1980.

To mark the Thorncrown Chapel's anniversary, architect-turned-photographer Randall Connaughton from Atlanta began an ongoing photography series of the wood-and-glass structure last year in what he described is "an effort to add new depth to the visual record of Thorncrown Chapel and bring its transcendent experience to a wide audience."

Thorncrown is the backdrop to countless wedding photos, but according to the Chapel organization, Connaughton's snapshots are the "first professionally produced photos of their kind" since 1980 -- when those photos that first contributed to ...

Canadian Wood Council pushes for more wood architecture excellence in the latest Wood Design Awards

2015-02-19T21:05:00-05:00

As the Canadian Wood Council's annual North American Wood Design Awards demonstrate, building with wood easily fuses aesthetics, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability for various projects. Aiming to push for more demand in wooden design and construction, the prestigious awards program scopes out projects that best exhibit contemporary design excellence and good ol' innovation in wood architecture.

The three-member jury -- Larry McFarland, Principal of McFarland Marceau Architects; Brigitte Shim, Principal of Shim-Sutcliffe Architects; and Keith Boswell, Technical Partner at SOM -- selected 24 out of 166 online submissions. Winners were selected in Honor, Merit, and Citation categories for North America, and a few International projects were recognized as well. Despite the categories, one could say these projects are on the same level.

Here's a glimpse of the winning projects:

↑ Refuge on the Bay of Fundy, Red Bank Farm, Hants County, NS, MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects. (Foundi...

Hello Wood to give 5,000 pieces of Christmas Charity Tree firewood to Budapest community

2014-12-22T19:48:00-05:00

Getting caught up in holiday madness has become so normal that it's easy to forget that the holidays can act as a reminder that caring for each other -- no matter how simple the act -- can go a long way. Architecture firm Hello Wood, who built the 11-meter Christmas tree made out of 365 sleighs last year, recently built another Christmas tree installation in Budapest called the Charity Tree.

This time around, Hello Wood worked with Design Terminal and the Hungarian Interchurch Aid to construct the 11-meter Charity Tree, which was built in 5 days from 5,000 pieces of firewood that weigh 150 quintals (or about 30,000 lbs.).

Visitors can also walk inside the tree to find a chapel-like interior space. At night, the tree glows with lighting effects by Philips Hungary.

After the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6, all the wood used to make the installation will be given to local families in need. The Charity Tree addresses the issue of the many Hungarian families lacking daily heating d...