Design
Why We Just Might Want to Build Skyscrapers Out of Wood
Vancouver-based architect Michael Green is trying to convince the world to construct tall wood buildings.
After ruinous fires that laid waste to wide swaths of the urban landscape, cities more than a century ago were eager for technology to come to the rescue, with new building materials and methods.
And of course history did not disappoint. The Monadnock building in Chicago (Burnham & Root, 1891) had its record-setting load-bearing masonry wall and iron frame; the staircases sported aluminum. It was off to the races from there, with curtain-walled towers of glass and concrete and steel.