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Tokyo To Build 350m Tower Made of Wood (theguardian.com)
A skyscraper set to be built in Tokyo will become the world's tallest to be made of wood. From a report: The Japanese wood products company Sumitomo Forestry Co is proposing to build a 350 metre (1,148ft), 70-floor tower to commemorate its 350th anniversary in 2041. Japan's government has long advertised the advantages of wooden buildings, and in 2010 passed a law requiring it be used for all public buildings of three stories or fewer. Sumitomo Forestry said the new building, known as the W350 Project, was an example of "urban development that is kind for humans," with more high-rise architecture made of wood and covered with greenery "making over cities as forests." The new building will be predominantly wooden, with just 10% steel. Its internal framework of columns, beams and braces -- made of a hybrid of the two materials -- will take account of Japan's high rate of seismic activity. The Tokyo-based architecture firm Nikken Sekkei contributed to the design.
the same as a duck?
I hope this doesn't end as a huge candle.
They could stand to make mention about replenishment and what about all the chemicals that are used to treat the wood?
It's as if these concerns don't even exist.
... for the highest wooden building in the world is either a 37.5 m high russion orthodox church [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2360473/Kizhi-Pogost-The-biggest-building-world-thats-entirely-wood.html] if you require something 'house shaped', or it is the 180 m tall ATLAS-I EMP testing apparatus built near the Sandia National Laboratory facility in New Mexico, which isn't quite as house-shaped [https://www.google.com/maps/place/35%C2%B001'47.6%22N+106%C2%B033'27.3%22W/@35.0296017,-106.5587137,310m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d35.029898!4d-106.557574?hl=en]
high-rise architecture made of wood and covered with greenery "making over cities as forests."
LoL Is Japan so urbanised that its inhabitants can imagine that buildings* covered in greenery can seem like a forest?
* Created by chopping down a forest. The guys in the Amazon Basin hacking down the last of the rain forest must be having wet dreams over this news.
What's Japanese for The Matchstick Building?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Wood certainly has it's uses, but it seems to me that a high rise is not one of them. Wood needs to be protected from the sun and elements. Who wants to have to paint or weather proof this thing every couple of years? I lived in a house with wood siding as a kid. I hated having to go out to scrape the old paint off and repainting it. I know paint and weather proofing has come a long way since I was a kid, but it's still going to need this done periodically.
This is why aluminum siding and later vinyl siding became a thing. It also sounds like they plan to have plants draped all over it. That will rot most wood even faster. Do they have carpenter or wood bees in Japan? If so, those little bastards will bore holes in damn near any wood they can find.
Where I am, building code prohibits wood for buildings over 4 stories (though they're talking about allowing it for up to 5 or even 6 because the builders don't want to pay for concrete, and their lobbying is amazingly effective) Combined with the requirement for all buildings over 4 stories to have elevators, we have a ton of 4 story apartment buildings. We've also proven repeatedly that wood is a HORRIBLE material for any multi-family building, as we've had quite a few burn to the ground leaving hundreds of people homeless. Of course each time they say that if only they'd made this minor tweak to the building code the disaster wouldn't have happened, but then the next one happens despite whatever tweak they say will solve it.
That they did many feasibility studies on how it can withstand earthquake or even storm level wind for that matter.
When I read this, I immediately wondered why it was even possible to build a 1,100 ft tall wooden building, more than eight times taller than the current record for the tallest wooden building. This Guardian article goes into more detail about the engineering of tall wooden buildings, and cites this Canadian Wood Council case study for some of its information. In short, the wood materials to be used are highly specialized fireproofed laminate composites. Calling the finished product wood is like calling Splenda sugar; just because it's a derivative of the original doesn't mean it's the same thing.
From an engineering perspective, a skyscraper undergoes incredible stresses. The building has to be capable of supporting itself and all the weight within it. It has to withstand the tremors of earthquakes, the forces of wind and water, and not lose its strength over time, even as it's exposed for decades to UV rays. The building materials need to have a unique combination of sheer strength, tensile strength, and compressive strength. A combination of steel and concrete give you all three. But natural wood is inconsistent. Flaws like knots and cracks in the grains weaken its sheer strength. Wood has great tensile strength in the direction of the grain, but is very weak against the grain. And it works the opposite way with compression. The only way to overcome these weaknesses is with laminates, which are very expensive (currently, due to the lack of demand) to produce.
Not to mention wood burns much easier.
My personal opinion is that there are some architects trying to get name recognition by coming up with something unique. I hope anyone considering to fund such imaginations take a lesson from the Spruce Goose and use wood when it's advantageous, not avant garde.
This has already been done.
As a showcase point-of-pride project, it will know doubt have a wow factor of the highest magnitude. Read the article and links within it - wood skyscrapers seem to be an idea on the ascendancy. Many of the putative benefits from a social, engineering, and ecological point of view no doubt have merit. However, there is a potential downside which was the first thing that came to my mind. Fire.
Looking at the concept renders in the article, try this estimate: 20 residential units per story, times 70 stories, average occupancy 3 people per unit, then add public crowds in office and retail space, and there could easily be 5000-6000 people present at a time. New York's twin towers were steel and concrete, and no one thought they could burn, yet the 2001 incident revealed unanticipated fire induced failure. In contrast, wood burns, no secret there. If there ever was a fire in such a structure, it would be a nightmare.
The article states that the company itself estimates a construction cost double a steel and concrete high rise of same size. That seems like a recipe to cut corners or overlook features, to trivialize the things that no one will overtly see. The recent June 14, 2017 Grenfell Tower high rise fire and deaths in London were a testimonial to crappy architectural design, crappy construction and oversight, and inept public administration. Nearly every high profile multi-fatality fire that makes the news can be traced to problems of that nature. The money goes into the gee whiz what-you-can-see-features (or in the case of the recent article about Apple's new glass walled headquarters, the things you can't see). Safety issues get trivialized, ignored, excluded.
Any building as proposed needs to have peremptory and big bucks attention to fire retardant design, fire recognition and suppression systems, human factors engineering, evacuation and rescue systems, first responder access. No doubt the sponsors, developers, and engineers will claim they did, but nearly every fatal building fire can be traced back to lapses in such. It will all look beautiful until the day it burns down, and then it's too late. One can only hope that they put safety up there with or even ahead of visual design and high concept.
It will probably all be engineered wood. It will have so much glue and additives in it that it will even be fireproof and waterproof, bugs certainly won't like it.
It will have so much glue and additives in it that it will even be fireproof and waterproof, bugs certainly won't like it.
Buildings eventually need to be demolished. What can be done with this engineered wood at that point? If we chop it up small and burn it, or dump it in a landfill, will the additives cause pollution? For that matter, if you drill a hole in a new piece of engineered wood, can you treat the debris like ordinary wood chips, or does it require special disposal?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
First of all, that story is from 2017. It isn't news.
Second, from the story, "The latest problems were discovered with shipments of more than 11,000 tons of steel, copper, and aluminum products made by Kobe Steel and its affiliates in Japan, China, Malaysia and Thailand."
So the actual true claim closest to the lie you told would be, "Being owned by a Japanese company doesn't magically cause product inspections to happen."
They're one of the world's biggest steel company, so 11k tons isn't actually very much.
No reports of problems at this point, only of faked test data. So some steel plants in "Japan, China, Malaysia, or Thailand" didn't do the testing for some of the products. This doesn't mean that there was a quality problem, only that there was a quality control problem. The people running the factory probably saw a long history of passing the quality tests, and decided to save some money and not do them. That's bad, especially if the parent company doesn't detect it and correct the problem.
But the story seems to really be that because Japan is so good at quality control, they discovered the faked test data even before it resulted in undetected problems in actual product quality.
It is already well known in the world that if you product comes from "Japan, China, Malaysia, or Thailand" that there might be variations in quality. Duh. I think people understand that whenever a product came from "Country A, Country B, Country C, or Country D." Duh. Does that mean that Country A had a bad reputation? No. No it does not.
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I sure hope they have a No Smoking rule that is enforced.
So it's quite possible for a concrete building to become a fire trap;
True, but how many more would have died if instead of just the cladding the main structural support material was inflammable? Most highrise buildings have staircases which are made of solid concrete to provide a safe, non-flammable escape route from most fires. When that fails, for example in the 911 attacks, the death toll can be one or more orders of magnitude larger because there is no safe escape route and the building will eventually collapse killing everyone who is trapped.
Google for "Pyramidenkogel" and "Rubner Holzbau" - you will be astonished, what's possible with wood.
I love the number of people telling the Japanese, of all people, how to build using wood, and using such mundane problems like rot as reasons it won't work. It's hilarious.
If it had been discovered by a third party and the company had to be forced to do anything about it, then you'd have a point.
But the company discovered it themselves, and chose to not only correct it but also notify affected customers.
This story increases confidence in the test results given out by Kobe Steel, it doesn't decrease it. Which company are you posting for, anyways? lol