London’s soaring timber tower could be a game changer for CLT

By Don Procter
Daily Commercial News
October 17, 2017
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: International

Kevin Flanagan

The world might not be quite ready for soaring timber skyscrapers but one architectural firm is getting headlines for a proposed wood tower that would be the tallest building in London, England. The conceptual 80-storey building called Oakwood Timber Tower “is the largest use of cross-laminated timber (CLT) in the U.K. and in Europe,” Kevin Flanagan said at the recent Green Building Festival in Toronto. …The tower is engineered in a series of quadrants or bundled columns, much like Chicago’s 1,450-foot-tall Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower, Flanagan said. As big city cores such as Toronto’s are pressured to intensify, CLT could prove to be a prime building material for residential towers, he said. “Rather than create CO2, by harvesting the renewable timber you can reduce CO2 (emissions) and actually go negative,” he explained.

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