Timber buildings are reaching towards the skies, thanks to breakthroughs in super-strong wood.
If there's one way to get people talking, it's to draw up plans for a new skyscraper and plonk it smack in the middle of an iconic skyline like London's, overlooking majestic St Paul's Cathedral. Londoners have nifty nicknames for the crop of eccentrically shaped skyscrapers that have popped up over the last decade or so – the Gherkin, the Cheese Grater and the Walkie-Talkie – but if a small group of British architects and engineers has their way, the historic skyline may be welcoming a bold geometric addition with a new moniker: the Toothpick. This sleek, 80-storey tower will soar 300 metres above the Barbican Centre, a gloomy, grey concrete slab of residential and arts buildings that was opened by the Queen in 1982.
But there's something very different about this proposed tower, something pointing to the possible rebirth of the skyscraper itself: the Toothpick, as its name suggests, will be made almost entirely from wood. Thanks to significant breakthroughs in super-strong engineered timber products over the past decade, making them as tough as structural steel or concrete, the stage is now set for the construction – for the first time in human history – of tall timber buildings.
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