40-storey wood highrises? It may be possible some day

Can you imagine a 40-storey highrise made of wood? Researchers at UBC Okanagan can.

With an increasing demand for a more sustainable alternative for highrise construction, new research from UBCO, in collaboration with Western University in London, Ont., and FPInnovations, points to timber as a sustainable and effective way to make tall, highdensity, and renewable buildings.

“Many people have trouble imagining a timber highrise of up to 40 storeys when we’re so used to seeing concrete and steel being the norm in today’s construction,” said Matiyas Bezabeh, a doctoral candidate at the UBCO School of Engineering. “But we’re starting to demonstrate that the proverbial wolf can’t knock over the pig’s wooden building when they’re built using modern techniques.”

Bezabeh and his supervisors, professors Solomon Tesfamariam from UBCO and Girma Bitsuamlak from Western, conducted extensive wind testing on tall mass-timber buildings of varying height between 10