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Innovative Future of Wood

Aakarsh singhal
Nov 16, 2016
2 min read

WoodWorks picks the best buildings that are using wood in non-residential applications so you can see how architects employ these materials on a larger scale. The hope is that by showcasing wood in such versatile designs, wood will become the material of choice for more and more architects down the road.

These are some of the architectures with smart use of Wood named as 2016 award winners by WoodWorks.

All of these structures are made from wood, but not the traditional two-by-fours you’re thinking of. These buildings make use of innovative new materials like glued-laminated timber (glulam) and cross-laminate timber (CLT), both of which are gaining in popularity.

China Pavilion Milan Expo 2015 | Milan, Italy

The roof is made from sheets of bamboo that act as sunscreens.

Architect: Studio Link-Arc, LLC; Architect: Tsinghua University; Structural Engineer: Simpson Gumpertz & Heger; General Contractor: Bodino Engineering; Photo: Sergio Grazia

Aspen Art Museum | Aspen, CO

The basket-weave of Aspen’s art museum not only protects from solar gain during the sunny summers; it’s also an effective tool for shouldering snow accumulation in the winter.

Architect: Shigeru Ban Architects; Structural Engineer: KL&A, Inc.; General Contractor: Turner Construction; Photo: Greg Kingsley, KL&A Inc.

Fire Station 76 | Gresham

If a firehouse uses wood, that should tell you something about the material’s safety and resilience, right? In fact, mass timber burns much slower than many other building materials.

Architect: Hennebery Eddy Architects; Structural Engineer: Nishkian Dean Structural Engineers; General Contractor: Bremik Construction