The layer of concrete, about the depth of one of the wood layers, helps solve three issues SOM had to address with CLT. It ended up being stiffer than we needed." SOM's Timber Tower floor test at the University of Oregon We knew we had to hit a certain stiffness target that would allow us to design these floors to not deflect, to not vibrate too much. And you can't allow the floors to get too bouncy people would get uncomfortable with them. "Long-term, you don't want the partitions cracking. "You have to have a certain amount of floor stiffness, so the floors don't get too saggy," Johnson says. The Timber Tower project passed its first major test recently: a 36-foot-by-8-foot floor section of CLT coated with reinforced concrete supported 82,000 pounds, exceeding required loads and structural expectations. "Once we really got to understanding the capabilities of cross-laminated timber, it became clear that these types of projects were viable from an engineering and architecture standpoint to heights far beyond what was allowable by code-meaning the material is so strong it can support a building that's very, very large," Johnson says. But that's the tallest CLT building that has been built. There's the Via Cenni complex in Milan, a 124-apartment complex Bridport House, a 41-unit building in London and the 10-story Forte building in Melbourne, the wood for which was shipped from Austria in 25 shipping containers. It was used as more of a hard-working industrial product for a long time." "But in the United States, the material itself was being used primarily for temporary foundations, for construction access, things of that nature. "Cross-laminated timber has been a building product really used in Europe for the past 20 years or so, for all types of different construction," says Benton Johnson, the SOM associate who's leading the firm's Timber Tower project. In South Dakota, there's a beautiful glulam highway bridge from the mid-20th century.ĬLT is a newer technology, developed in the 1990s in Austria wood is laid together so that the grain of each layer is perpendicular to the grain of the next, glued, and pressed, making it more rigid than regular laminated timber, where the grains run parallel. It's an old idea, too glued laminated (glulam) timber has been used for roofs and other structural elements since the mid-19th century, such as for the spectacular roof of the Richmond Olympic Oval. It's a simple idea: smaller pieces of timber are glued together to make big pieces. It was a prototype for a 42-story building made out of cross-laminated timber for the floors and laminated timber for the columns. Among the models of architectural grace, it was an engineering idea, but it compelled me the most. It took a second to figure out what it was: a skyscraper made, mostly, out of wood. While I was waiting in their lobby, I browsed a display of models from the firm's architects-new supertalls, a Chicago Architecture Biennial experiment, and so forth.Īmong the wondrous designs was what looked like a straightforward Miesian skyscraper. If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps.A while back I was at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for a story about the cutting edge of architecture: a 3D-printed building. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.) That’s why, even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. It’s important that we have several ways we make money, just like it’s important for you to have a diversified retirement portfolio to weather the ups and downs of the stock market. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world - not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple of big issues with relying on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on.įirst, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?
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