Would you embrace the wooden future?

It wasn’t long ago wooden skyscrapers seemed like a bizarre novelty — the wave of the future, courtesy of 476k years ago. 

Milwaukee’s 25-story Ascent MKE apartment used “mass timber,” a trendy construction tech in which regular pieces of wood are attached through a lamination process to create bigger, stronger beams and panels.

We’ve covered mass timber before, but the highlights are:

• It’s just as strong and (somehow) about as fire-resistant as steel and concrete.
• It results in fewer CO2 emissions than other materials.
• And, not for nothing, there are aesthetic benefits and a fun novelty factor — your friends will ooh and aah if you show off a skyscraper made of wood. 

Ascent is currently the world’s tallest mass timber building, but it can get splintered for all we care, because Milwaukee is already planning to build an even taller one. 

But it’s not just Milwaukee

The wooden future is already here. In 2022, there were 84 high-rises globally constructed using mass timber. As of last month, there were 2.2k+ mass timber buildings either finished or under construction in the US alone.

That number will certainly keep rising, but is that a good thing? Mass timber isn’t as bad for the environment as concrete or steel, plus wood is a renewable resource, but: 

• As demand for mass timber increases, so will the demand for timber, which means cutting down more trees. 
• Historically, humans haven’t been very good about replanting the trees they cut down.
• Experts still aren’t sure what the long-term CO2 emissions will look like, especially if these buildings are torn down and materials are tossed in landfills. 

So really think about it before you build a wooden skyscraper just to impress your friends.