Via Climate Progress
By ANDREW BREINER
North America’s tallest modern all-wood building is nearing completion in Prince George, British Columbia, but it might not hold that high rank for long. Other wood buildings are in the works across the world as it gains a reputation for climate friendliness, beauty, and yes, even fire safety.
The Wood Innovation Design Centre will be a six-story building, the maximum for a wood building under British Columbia’s building code, but the Centre’s high ceilings mean it will be about as tall as the average 10-floor building. It’ll join the current highest and second-highest modern wood buildings, respectively, a ten-story Melbourne residential building and a nine-story London apartment building.
But no new wood building yet has surpassed the world’s tallest, built in the 18th century. The Kizhi Pogost is a UNESCO World Heritage Site located on an island in northern Russia, and has a central cupola 37 meters high, a few meters above the tops of the new wood high-rises. But it likely won’t hold onto the title of tallest wood building for long.
One all-wood building in northern Norway will be 17 stories high, and there’s also talk of a more theoretical 34-story wooden skyscraper in Sweden.