By Lloyd Alter, Source: Treehugger

plyscraper

The Guardian has a new feature on Resilient Cities and looks at a subject dear to this TreeHugger’s heart, wooden buildings. They make so much sense right now, with square miles of pine-beetle infested wood that will rot where it stands if not turned into something. Now it can be turned into Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) sort of plywood on steroids and used to build mid-rise to high-rise towers, nicknamed “plyscrapers.”

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Vancouver

Athlyn Cathcart-Keays covers much of the same turf trod on TreeHugger, starting with Vancouver architect Michael Green, who tells the Guardian why wood construction is so important, asking architects…

to branch out beyond their concrete and steel confinements, and embrace a material that sequesters carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, holding it captive during its growth and lifetime in a structure – one tonne of CO2 per cubic metre of wood. To put that in context, while a 20-storey wooden building sequesters about 3,100 tonnes of carbon, the equivalent-sized concrete building pumps out 1,200 tonnes. That net difference of 4,300 tonnes is the equivalent of removing 900 cars from the city for a year.

See more at: Treehugger