Dive Brief:
-
The Canadian architect who designed what will be the tallest wood office building in the U.S. has unveiled plans for a 35-story skyscraper in Paris that, if built, would become the world’s most towering wood structure.
-
The seven-story Minneapolis office building — dubbed T3 for timber, technology and transit, is expected to break ground this summer. There are no plans yet to start construction of the Paris skyscraper. The architect's firm, MGA, along with a partner firm and real estate group, submitted the design to Reinventer Paris — a competition seeking design ideas for new architecture in the city.
-
But work is underway or about to begin on supertalls made almost entirely from wood in Austria, Stockholm, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Dive Insight:
In an email to CNN, Green compared the so-called “plyscraper” to the iconic Eiffel Tower, which he said inspired architects to start designing tall structures with steel. That tower was the world’s tallest structure when it opened in 1889 and started “the race for height” among urban skylines all over the world, Green said.
Green is an outspoken supporter of building with wood because of timber’s environmental benefits.
