This article was taken from the February 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Wood is taking root as the latest must-have material in construction. In the UK, the number of new houses built with timber last year increased by 14 per cent, up to 37,000 constructions. "The share of timber construction has also increased," says Dave Hopkins of the UK's Timber Trade Federation. "Timber-frame now accounts for between 22-25 per cent of market share in new-build housing." "People had started asking, 'Why can't we do ambitious projects with timber?'" says Seattle-based architect Joseph Mayo, whose new book Solid Wood: Case Studies in Mass Timber Architecture, Technology and Design celebrates the trend. "The answer that keeps coming back is that, actually, you can." "Ply-scraper" projects proposed include a 20-storey vertical farm in Vancouver -- but isn't this boom driving deforestation? Not necessarily: the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability at the University of British Columbia (main image) takes advantage of the huge numbers of pine being killed by mountain pine beetle infestations across North America. The beetles eat nutrients in the tree sap, leaving a damaging bacterium in their wake. The trees eventually die, but their wood is unharmed -- and if left to rot, they would contribute huge amounts of CO<sub>2</sub> to the atmosphere. Using them in construction locks away this carbon.
WIRED picks four more buildings working wonders with wood.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
