2020

Wood is being Used more Extensively for Construction Purposes

Over the last decade, the popularity of wood as a building material in the world has grown so fast that the records of wooden construction are broken one after another. It is expected that in the very near future, wooden high-rise buildings in the cities of the developed world will become quite a daily occurrence.

In 2014, the title of the tallest wooden residential building in the world with the participation of Estonians was won by a house with a rather unpretentious name “Tree” built in the Norwegian city of Bergen; however, the record was able to last only a few years. Already in 2018, the title of the tallest wooden building went to the state of British Columbia in Canada, where a 53-metre-high student hotel was opened on the campus of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

In 2019, Norwegians regained their lost positions: Brumundal has proudly opened a new tallest wooden building — Mjøstårnet, which is 85.4 metres high. However, it is planned that in the spring of 2022 the tallest wooden building will be located in the US state of Wisconsin, where construction of a new 25-storey residential complex “Ascent” started in Milwaukee at the end of the summer. Its height after the completion of construction will reach 284 feet or 86.6 metres. It is interesting that the building was originally designed to be 23 storeys high, but before starting the construction works the project was supplemented with two more floors, which guarantees a world record.

259 luxury apartments will be built in the new wooden skyscraper, the interior of which will be complemented by open solid wood columns. Cross-laminated timber or CLT panels for the new building will be produced in Austria.

The total cost of the project is estimated at $ 125 million. Despite the global Covid-19 pandemic, interest in the new facility is huge, and some of the apartments are already reserved for the new owners.

The “Ascent” project is also special in that its implementers have received a test grant from the US Federal Forest Service to demonstrate that the strength of wooden structures does not lag behind or even outperform traditional reinforced concrete or steel structures.