ABSTRACT
Prefabricated engineered solid wood panel construction systems can sequester and store carbon dioxide. Modular cross-laminated timber (CLT, cross-lam) panels form the basis of low-carbon, engineered construction systems, using solid wood panels to build residential infill developments of 10 storeys or higher. Multi-apartment buildings of 4 to 10 storeys constructed entirely in timber, such as those recently developed in Europe, are innovative, but their social and cultural acceptance in Australia and North America is uncertain. Future commercial utilization will only be possible if there is user acceptance.
The authors study two problems: first, models of urban infill and how the use of CLT construction systems can play an important role in facilitating a more liveable city, with better models of inner-city infill housing. The second problem is the social acceptance of multi-storey timber buildings: the shift to resource-optimized infill buildings, constructed in CLT, requires behaviour change and a change in values to ensure these buildings will be fully acceptable to their future occupants.
Wood is an important contemporary building resource due to its low embodied energy and unique attributes. The potential of prefabricated engineered solid wood panel systems, such as CLT, as a sustainable building system is only just being realized. Since timber is one of the few materials that has the capacity to store carbon in large quantities over a long period of time, solid wood panel construction offers the opportunity of carbon engineering to turn buildings into ‘carbon sinks’. Thus, some of the historically negative environmental impact of urban development and construction can be turned around with CLT construction on brownfield sites.
The authors introduce a series of international precedents and explore their levels of acceptance: these are case studies of recently constructed residential timber buildings in London, Vienna, Berlin and Trondheim.
There is a need to clarify why consumers would want to buy apartments in these buildings. Further research will be necessary, using in-depth post-occupancy evaluations (POE) that involve owners, residents, neighbours, architects, real-estate experts and developers, and which are designed to assess residential life in multi-storey timber buildings. Such first-hand impressions will be invaluable in encouraging the social acceptance of multi-storey timber construction in Australia.
