The Era of the Wood Skyscraper Is Arriving
reasonstobecheerful.world
reasonstobecheerful.world
Lumber, leather, wool...
Wood isn't the best material, it is the cheapest, because it is already made and just waiting to be harvested.
Took us a long time to come up with a good carbon fiber tech tree.
> Took us a long time to come up with a good carbon fiber tech tree.
I don't know what this is supposed to mean
> carbon fiber
I think the "tech tree" of wood products has been around for hundreds of years. It's only been the last few decades where we have developed synthetic materials that were strong AND light. I would say carbon fiber and other composites have really only come into their element maybe since the 80's so with cost-insensitive projects like military jets.
Maybe compared to other wood. It is one step above cardboard.
Why are you even bringing up carbon fiber?
The above post was saying we can't create anything better than wood based on a title of a skyscraper being made of wood. The building isn't actually a skyscraper, it is actually made of wood, concrete and steel, and humanity isn't "struggling" to come up with better materials than wood. Wood is used because it has already been made.
Airplanes, cars and boats aren't made out of balsa wood. They are made out of aluminum, steel and polymers. I have no idea how you hallucinated a reason to bring up carbon fiber.
A single normal building made using more wood than normal does not mean anyone is 'struggling to come up with better materials than nature'. The above post is nonsense.
Also if you look up specific strength you can see that balsa wood stacks up terribly compared to modern polymers and alloys.
How is wool great? It maybe somewhat warm but it's itchy, and prone to issues with water. Thinsulate is often superior.
Wool clothing stays warm when wet, and has antiseptic properties, keeping it fresh for longer.
Sure, for many applications, we have better alternatives, but often we just don't. Or they are not cost-effective, which to me is the same - we have something just-as-good, but harder to make.
Another one is down for down jackets etc. Synthetic has its upsides, but we still can't make anything as warm, compact and light as down jackets.
Nit: "Literally" is an unnecessary word in most circumstances.
And until we start killing cows and discarding the carcass just for the leather, I can't imagine the processing is any worse than synthetic, usually petroleum based substitutes.
Leather fades when exposed to sunlight. Leathers aren't waterproof without treatment.
Wool shrinks when it gets wet.
Wood is great, but it does have downsides. I wouldn't like to see a real-life sequel to The Towering Inferno.
The wooden building in this article looks different, with much thicker wooden posts and flooring. The article said a test structure lasted four hours at 1000C temperature flames.
My understanding is much of the fire rating comes from interior materials that protect the wood from fire.
I don't want to assume that a wooden building under construction would be less safe than multiple conventional buildings. Grenfell was a particular error in cladding choices, but still. Remember https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/fire-breaks-out-dubai-sky...
This is not true, part of that is a carbon sink
"That stores an impressive 1,753 metric tons of carbon dioxide and avoids production of 679"
It houses 400 people. The average person uses ~17 tonnes per year. The inhabitants using 6800 tonnes per year.
People who live in units uses far less carbon than people who don't. So we don't want to save on carbon emissions making units, it's not a lot comparatively. We want to maximise on people living in units.
We need to keep the prices down, make it liveable and make planning permissions easier. This is great for rich students, but we need all options, including tall concrete buildings.
Other problems:
- Fires
- Humidity management: wood cracks if too dry, changes shape with humidity levels, and fails if too high
- Variance in strength
I don't think they thought this through. Steel is better. If I hear next "let's make skyscrapers out of rice paper," I'm going to think "The Onion."
Wood cracking turns out to not be much of an issue either because most of the cracking happens before installation: you can just not use the beams with the worst cracks. Even if beams do crack they do so lengthwise which doesn't affect their structural support much if at all.
Steel is better in a lot of ways than wood, but simultaneously wood is better than steel in a lot of ways as well.
It does, and by a lot. This is why wooden houses collapse during fires, and bury people trapped in them in a fiery grave.
No construction technique out there can make wood a safe construction material, no way, and no how.
The wood still burns no matter how much fire retardant you soak in it, and it will inevitable rot, warp, and slip off fasteners.
The vodoo cult of "wooden skyscrapers" is bizarre, and the way they slip past building regulations is even more.
In BC, the wood lobby effectively managed to undo a fire safety testing for building materials, and rewrite a big part of fire code to make wooden skyscrapers possible.
Cross-laminated timber has a "char layer" that keeps the other layers from burning through, and is even known for withstanding higher temperatures than steel: https://www.greenspec.co.uk/building-design/crosslam-timber-...