That’s a vision of the future – a future that now seems almost inevitable. Picture a hospital or a data centre, with a ceiling made of timber. Perhaps that’s a stretch, but if so, not for long. The curve of the new, wood-dominated high-rises, like so many architectural movements before, starts with the obvious, design-driven projects, but will, in time, move on to the more mundane, like the office block or, perhaps most surprisingly, the hospital. Such buildings are, by their nature, not the kind of place you’d expect to find wood: a hospital has traditionally been associated with concrete and a data centre with steel.
This movement is not, however, just a design fad. Rather, it’s a structural shift and one that’s been in the making for some time. For Timber Merchants Portsmouth, visit https://www.timbco.co.uk/timber-merchants-portsmouth/
The mass timber revolution relies on cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glulam beams, both engineered wood products. Both are far larger than the timber used in Victorian terraces and far larger than old Victorian terraces themselves. The CLT is made by stacking planks in alternating directions, then glueing them together to form solid panels with great strength, dimensional stability and fire resistance.
The last point requires some explaining, because, understandably, the first thing that jumps to mind when somebody mentions wood and tall buildings is the word ‘fire’. The fear that mass timber buildings will go up in flames in the same way as the wooden skyscrapers of the early 20th century is still real. However, this fear is not quite justified. When subjected to fire, mass timber products do char on their surfaces, but they also have a structural core intact, so calculations can be made to ensure safety. In fact, as engineers point out, fire safety standards for the new generation of mass timber structures are already far more complete than anything that existed for steel-framed structures in the early days of tall buildings.
It is well documented in studies regarding hospitals that patients have lower stress levels and reduced blood pressure, with associated recovery times, when in environments made from wood. There is a good reason for this: human well-being is a basic component of many buildings. And who would deny that a hospital should be a priority for human wellbeing? We already see this in the NHS projects that make explicit use of exposed timber finishes.
For data centres, it is carbon that is the key driver. The carbon stored in timber, as opposed to being released as CO2, has become a critical component in the environmental footprint of the tech sector, particularly with the looming spectre of net-zero commitments hanging over them all.
