Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com covers a visionary for building in wood – Michael Green:
By the end of this talk it was clear that Michael Green has moved well beyond just building wood towers, but is thinking about the future of the entire industry, about “Design, construction, policy, markets, ownership, environmental impact.” He is setting up a school to teach about sustainable building (DBR | Design Build Research) and an online version, TOE (Timber Online Education) that is “a platform that can galvanize change in the way we construct our built environment.” He’s a busy guy. …
But if you really want to get your mind blown, Listen to Michael’s vision of the future of wood construction, which he started talking about after the lecture to a student asking why we don’t use more hemp in construction; watching this and you might think he is smoking hemp.
He envisions a future where instead of chopping trees into lumber which is then glued or nailed into mass timber, we 3D print it from wood fiber, in the shapes and forms that are most efficient structurally. Then all of the wood fiber will be used and there will be no waste, either on the forest floor or in the building itself. We will not only build using trees, but will build like a tree.
Before getting too excited about the vision, I’d like to know what’s holding these fibers together? And what will be the energy consumption of these 3D printers? And this wood fiber – was it created through mulching trees?
