Category Archives: Wood, Paper & Green Building

Last May, the developer of one of the most expensive, contentious and highly-anticipated architectural proposals in years announced its sudden cancellation. …The major green selling point, featured prominently in all marketing material and renders, was Sidewalk Lab’s bold intention to build every new Quayside building out of wood using mass timber technology. …Invented in Austria and Germany during the 1990s, mass timber has rapidly risen to prominence through its reputation as a naturally regenerating, globally abundant and incredibly versatile alternative to carbon-intensive steel and concrete construction. …Canadian architect Michael Green… claims that wood building technology is crucial for addressing the oncoming crises of climate change and affordable housing. …The impulse towards quick fixes is not a new phenomenon in sustainable design. …LEED’s general failure to reduce carbon emissions has been well documented and is common knowledge within the design community… Mass timber risks becoming another LEED-style solution

British fashion designer Stella McCartney unveiled a black “leather” bustier top made not from cow hide, but mycelium — which is grown from fungi. Up until now, if you wanted leather that wasn’t made from animals, you’ve probably had to settle for plastic. …But a number of big brands, in partnership with biotechnology startups, say later this year you’ll be able to buy more products with leather made from another bio-based material that’s grown by recycling waste. Mycelium is already on the market in the form of styrofoam-like packaging, “un-leather” handbags, flooring and sound-proofing acoustic panels. …But manufacturers are now aiming to scale up the products and applications, which they tout as a more sustainable substitute for petroleum-derived plastics such as styrofoam and vinyl …and even other bio-based materials such as cardboard and wood. 

David Hopkins

Architects can help fight climate change by specifying tropical timber, according to Timber Trade Federation CEO David Hopkins. Speaking in a live Dezeen talk, Hopkins said that the Timber Trade Federation (TTF) wants to challenge negative associations surrounding tropical wood and promote it as “valuable feedstocks for the design world”. By specifying responsibly-sourced tropical timber, architects and designers can help prevent unsustainable forest clearing. “That whole world [of tropical timber] has a very negative connotation with a lot of people,” Hopkins said. “There’s a lot of work going on within tropical forestry and tropical timber production that is incredibly positive,” he explained. …Produced in association with the TTF, the aim of the talk was to raise awareness of a European Union initiative called the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade. …Hopkins argued that by specifying timber from responsibly-managed forests, designers can help encourage more sustainable forestry practices.

LONDON–Corona today launches a new, circular form of packaging for six-packs as part of its long-standing dedication to protecting the environment – harnessing surplus barley straw to create a truly sustainable paper packaging solution. …This ground-breaking technology reimagines how to use barley, giving the essential beer ingredient new life as a sustainable packaging solution. Barley seed will continue to make the beer that consumers know and love. But barley straw, a leftover from farmers’ harvests, will now be used through a unique pulping process built to handle its relative fragility. Combined with 100% recycled wood fibers, this process creates a paper board to produce new packaging that is as strong and durable as a regular six-pack, but better for the planet – able to carry six cold beer bottles from the store fridge to the beach, but using far fewer resources along the way.

Elliott Wood and the Institution of Structural Engineers is launching a free open-source app aimed at tackling the climate crisis. The Structural Carbon Tool enables users to quickly estimate the embodied carbon in their structure and allows comparison of up to six options at once. It can be used to locate embodied carbon hotspots in a design, allowing a focused approach to reducing it. …Institution of Structural Engineers head of climate action Will Arnold added: “Structural engineers are responsible for around 10% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. We will leave a lasting impact on the next generation, and it is up to us to decide what our legacy will look like. The Structural Carbon Tool will help engineers to make positive choices in their work.”

British Columbia (B.C.)—Canada’s wood product technology and building expertise is now being used in a new building built at the CEPT University, Ahmedabad. This is a result of a MOU signed between Forestry Innovation Consulting India (FII India) and CEPT University in 2016 wherein FII India provided the University with 56 cubic meters of wood to build the workshop. Additionally, FII India’s support on technical assistance and procurement support went a long way in making this vision a reality. Named as the “Centre of Excellence Workshop”, the building spread across 13,000 sq.ft. houses workshops for students of architecture and design across seven disciplines. The workshop extensively uses Douglas-fir, western hemlock and yellow-cedar. It is arguably one of India’s first large-scale commercial demonstration of long-spanned 28 cubic meters of Douglas-fir glued laminated beams. The successful introduction of Douglas-fir glue laminated beams (glulam), a product not previously used in India was made to order for CEPT. 

Ingo Burgert and his team at Empa and ETH Zurich has proven it time and again: Wood is so much more than “just” a building material. Their research aims at extending the existing characteristics of wood in such a way that it is suitable for completely new ranges of application. For instance, they have already developed high-strength, water-repellent, and magnetizable wood. Now, together with the Empa research group of Francis Schwarze and Javier Ribera, the team has developed a simple, environmentally friendly process for generating electricity from a type of wood sponge, as they reported last week in the journal Science Advances.  If you want to generate electricity from wood, the so-called piezoelectric effect comes into play. Piezoelectricity means that an electric voltage is created by the elastic deformation of solids.

AUSTRALIA — There’s a lot of complexity starting to emerge in our love affair with timber. As the climate emergency grows, this most natural and historic of our building materials offers great opportunities to sequester carbon. But there are also challenges in how it’s used and grown. …FSC Australia’s CEO Damian Paull told The Fifth Estate he has observed a… burgeoning interest in timber for mid- to high-rise construction has not been missed by the organisation. …One way to ensure more FSC timber ends up in buildings is to certify construction projects, he says. To do that we need to keep growingthe whole pie – both plantation and native forestry. Planet Ark’s Rowlinson  says that is important because Australia is in a $2 billion timber trade deficit, despite being the seventh most densely forested nation in the world.

The UK Timber Trade Federation is showcasing the winning entries of its Conversations about Climate Change design competition via a virtual exhibition and event series. The competition, which received more than 100 responses from around the world, called on entrants to create an installation that would provoke discussions about global warming while showcasing the environmental benefits of responsibly sourced, tropical hardwoods. “Responsibly forested timber is an essential part of the climate change solution; however, tropical forests have too often been undervalued and their forest land cleared for other uses,” said David Hopkins, CEO of the Timber Trade Federation. “Our competition asked architects and designers to respond to tropical timber, think about the materials they usually work with and consider how the role of materials specified is vital for implementing change.” …Explore the virtual exhibition and discover more about the six winning installations made from VPA tropical hardwoods on the Building Centre’s website.