Events

Definitions and criteria for the "World’s Tallest Timber Building": call for international participation

The “Workshop to Define Criteria for and Advance Best Practices in High-Rise Mass Timber” is organised by Arup and the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat to discuss the wide range of construction approaches to tall timber buildings.

Tall building industry has become increasingly interested in the use of timber as a major structural element in skyscrapers. The potential advantages are far-reaching: a lower carbon footprint than conventional construction, the sequestering of carbon during the life of the tree, combined with high strength and aesthetic appeal. This has resulted in a now-worldwide wave of research, built projects, and ever more daring speculative proposals using “mass timber.”

As a result, there are now numerous claims to the title of “tallest timber building,” which have become increasingly difficult to validate, because of the myriad hybrid construction approaches used. Additionally, codes and practices are far from uniform, and in many jurisdictions, they prohibit construction of wooden buildings above a certain height.

Meet us next 29 October in Sydney to discuss how to:

  1. Establish a criteria for categorizing the wide range of construction approaches to tall timber buildings, for inclusion in the official CTBUH Height Criteria, and ultimate determination of the "World's Tallest Timber Building" title.

  2. Develop recommendations for standardized methods of tall-timber design and construction.

  3. Expand the existing CTBUH Tall Timber Working Group into an international committee.

  4. Ultimately produce a CTBUH Technical Guide on High-Rise Timber Construction

The workshop will be led by Carsten Hein, Arup Berlin, co-chair of the CTBUH Tall Timber Working Group; and Rob Foster, Senior Lecturer, The University of Queensland.

Representatives from the projects included in the recent Tall Buildings in Numbers report “Tall Timber: A Global Audit," will be in attendance. As space is limited, please contact Nicole McLellan at [email protected] to register your interest in joining the workshop.