Cleaner, greener, quicker, stronger: Is wood the building material of the future?

We live in a world of concrete. Meanwhile, the world’s tallest timber building has also been built using CLT – the 85.4-metre, 18-storey Mjostarnet building in Norway, which was completed in 2019 and is also the country’s third-tallest building. open image in gallery The 18-storey Mjostarnet building in Norway is the world’s tallest timber building As the UK government seeks to “build back better”, from the impacts of the coronavirus crisis, should the use of timber in construction play a greater role? “So a building made out of CLT in effect stores the sequestered carbon during growth and becomes a carbon sink.” Asked if it could replace steel in the wider construction industry, Dr Julien says “It certainly should.” At the end of its useful life CLT can be repurposed – something tricky to achieve with other building materials. “A large majority of timber – around 80 per cent – can be reprocessed at the end of the life of the building, when it is demolished, into lower-grade materials such as particleboard.” But Dr Julien warns it is “absolutely essential” that the timber used should come from managed forests which have been properly certified as being sustainable sources of wood.