From the perspective of world architectural history, Western classical architecture mainly uses stone, while East Asia has the tradition of using timber to build palaces. The use of timber has lasted for nearly a thousand years in the history of Chinese architecture. Chinese traditional wooden buildings are connected by mortise and tenon joint, but due to the limitations of ancient construction techniques and the nature of the timber itself, wooden buildings are mostly low-rise buildings in the past.
In the context of climate change and global warming, concrete and steel buildings have been polluted the ecological environment, architects now facing the challenge of emerging sustainability into design. Compared to stone, timber has greater plasticity and lower cost, and the timber structure is more convenient and greener than traditional reinforced concrete structure. With the advancement of modern technology, the limitation of the strength of timber construction has been gradually solved. Modern engineers have increased the strength of timber by blending concrete into the structure, which makes it possible to build high-rise buildings in timber structure. As a result, timber architecture was re-introduced by architects, and many architectural firms has begun the exploring.
This case – River Beech Tower, comes from Perkins + Will, although it is still a conceptual design, but the architects have a good vision of the high-rise buildings in timber structure. Perkins + Will’s architects collaborated with Thornton Tomasetti’s engineers, design a 80-story timber high-rise building in conceptual, which is in Chicago.
The character of the design is the use of the natural axial strength of the timber and the use of a diagonal grid system on the facade. Engineers have found that the timber-concrete hybrid system with the aid of a steel-structure mixing system, can withstand a weight of 82,000 pounds, which is much higher than the required load. This hybrid system has broad market prospects in the future.
Although it is still in the stage of conceptual design and theoretical research, there may be many other problems that need to be improved during the actual construction and use. However, the mixed material structure solves the major problem of the strength of the timber structure, which makes the potential of the future high-rise building in timber structure highly increased.
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