125 m-high wooden skyscraper is feasible ...

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the architecture firm responsible for both America’s tallest building (the new One World Trade Centre in New York) and the world’s tallest building (the Burj Khalifa in Dubai), has found in a study that a 125m-high skyscraper made (mostly) from mass timber products is technically feasible, economically competitive and could reduce its carbon footprint by up to 75%.

With reference to the US Department of Agriculture’s recent announcement of a US-$ 2 million competition to demonstrate the viability of a new generation of wooden "plyscrapers" (see link 1), The Economist sniffs the chance for the US to set up the world’s largest skyscraper made of wood. Made from weak softwood of variable quality, cross-laminated timber (CLT)-panels can be engineered to be virtually identical and even stronger than concrete and to resist fire well. Above all, "mass timber" products like CLT are naturally renewable, take less energy to make than concrete and steel, and capture carbon dioxide.

The Economist-report concedes, however, that conservative building regulations, lack of interest from developers and the absence of commercial CLT-manufacturers are major obstacles on the way of the USA to “plyscraper”-fame.