Why we should build wooden skyscrapers
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0:01 - 0:04This is my grandfather.
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0:04 - 0:06And this is my son.
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0:06 - 0:08My grandfather taught me to work with wood
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0:08 - 0:10when I was a little boy,
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0:10 - 0:12and he also taught me the idea that
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0:12 - 0:15if you cut down a tree to turn it into something,
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0:15 - 0:17honor that tree's life and make it as beautiful
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0:17 - 0:19as you possibly can.
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0:19 - 0:23My little boy reminded me
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0:23 - 0:26that for all the technology and all the toys in the world,
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0:26 - 0:28sometimes just a small block of wood,
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0:28 - 0:30if you stack it up tall,
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0:30 - 0:34actually is an incredibly inspiring thing.
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0:34 - 0:36These are my buildings.
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0:36 - 0:37I build all around the world
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0:37 - 0:40out of our office in Vancouver and New York.
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0:40 - 0:43And we build buildings of different sizes and styles
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0:43 - 0:45and different materials, depending on where we are.
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0:45 - 0:47But wood is the material that I love the most,
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0:47 - 0:49and I'm going to tell you the story about wood.
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0:49 - 0:51And part of the reason I love it is that every time
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0:51 - 0:54people go into my buildings that are wood,
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0:54 - 0:56I notice they react completely differently.
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0:56 - 0:59I've never seen anybody walk into one of my buildings
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0:59 - 1:01and hug a steel or a concrete column,
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1:01 - 1:04but I've actually seen that happen in a wood building.
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1:04 - 1:07I've actually seen how people touch the wood,
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1:07 - 1:09and I think there's a reason for it.
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1:09 - 1:11Just like snowflakes, no two pieces of wood
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1:11 - 1:14can ever be the same anywhere on Earth.
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1:14 - 1:16That's a wonderful thing.
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1:16 - 1:18I like to think that wood
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1:18 - 1:22gives Mother Nature fingerprints in our buildings.
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1:22 - 1:24It's Mother Nature's fingerprints that make
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1:24 - 1:29our buildings connect us to nature in the built environment.
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1:29 - 1:31Now, I live in Vancouver, near a forest
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1:31 - 1:34that grows to 33 stories tall.
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1:34 - 1:36Down the coast here in California, the redwood forest
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1:36 - 1:39grows to 40 stories tall.
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1:39 - 1:42But the buildings that we think about in wood
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1:42 - 1:45are only four stories tall in most places on Earth.
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1:45 - 1:49Even building codes actually limit the ability for us to build
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1:49 - 1:51much taller than four stories in many places,
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1:51 - 1:53and that's true here in the United States.
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1:53 - 1:55Now there are exceptions,
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1:55 - 1:57but there needs to be some exceptions,
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1:57 - 1:59and things are going to change, I'm hoping.
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1:59 - 2:01And the reason I think that way is that
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2:01 - 2:04today half of us live in cities,
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2:04 - 2:07and that number is going to grow to 75 percent.
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2:07 - 2:09Cities and density mean that our buildings
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2:09 - 2:12are going to continue to be big,
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2:12 - 2:16and I think there's a role for wood to play in cities.
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2:16 - 2:19And I feel that way because three billion people
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2:19 - 2:22in the world today, over the next 20 years,
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2:22 - 2:23will need a new home.
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2:23 - 2:25That's 40 percent of the world that are going to need
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2:25 - 2:29a new building built for them in the next 20 years.
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2:29 - 2:31Now, one in three people living in cities today
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2:31 - 2:33actually live in a slum.
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2:33 - 2:36That's one billion people in the world live in slums.
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2:36 - 2:41A hundred million people in the world are homeless.
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2:41 - 2:43The scale of the challenge for architects
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2:43 - 2:46and for society to deal with in building
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2:46 - 2:50is to find a solution to house these people.
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2:50 - 2:54But the challenge is, as we move to cities,
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2:54 - 2:57cities are built in these two materials,
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2:57 - 3:00steel and concrete, and they're great materials.
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3:00 - 3:02They're the materials of the last century.
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3:02 - 3:05But they're also materials with very high energy
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3:05 - 3:09and very high greenhouse gas emissions in their process.
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3:09 - 3:11Steel represents about three percent
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3:11 - 3:13of man's greenhouse gas emissions,
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3:13 - 3:16and concrete is over five percent.
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3:16 - 3:19So if you think about that, eight percent
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3:19 - 3:22of our contribution to greenhouse gases today
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3:22 - 3:25comes from those two materials alone.
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3:25 - 3:28We don't think about it a lot, and unfortunately,
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3:28 - 3:30we actually don't even think about buildings, I think,
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3:30 - 3:31as much as we should.
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3:31 - 3:35This is a U.S. statistic about the impact of greenhouse gases.
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3:35 - 3:38Almost half of our greenhouse gases are related to the building industry,
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3:38 - 3:41and if we look at energy, it's the same story.
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3:41 - 3:44You'll notice that transportation's sort of second down that list,
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3:44 - 3:46but that's the conversation we mostly hear about.
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3:46 - 3:50And although a lot of that is about energy,
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3:50 - 3:53it's also so much about carbon.
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3:53 - 3:56The problem I see is that, ultimately,
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3:56 - 3:58the clash of how we solve that problem
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3:58 - 4:01of serving those three billion people that need a home,
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4:01 - 4:05and climate change, are a head-on collision
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4:05 - 4:08about to happen, or already happening.
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4:08 - 4:11That challenge means that we have to start thinking in new ways,
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4:11 - 4:13and I think wood is going to be part of that solution,
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4:13 - 4:15and I'm going to tell you the story of why.
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4:15 - 4:17As an architect, wood is the only material,
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4:17 - 4:20big material, that I can build with
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4:20 - 4:23that's already grown by the power of the sun.
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4:23 - 4:26When a tree grows in the forest and gives off oxygen
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4:26 - 4:28and soaks up carbon dioxide,
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4:28 - 4:31and it dies and it falls to the forest floor,
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4:31 - 4:36it gives that carbon dioxide back to the atmosphere or into the ground.
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4:36 - 4:39If it burns in a forest fire, it's going to give that carbon
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4:39 - 4:41back to the atmosphere as well.
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4:41 - 4:44But if you take that wood and you put it into a building
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4:44 - 4:48or into a piece of furniture or into that wooden toy,
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4:48 - 4:49it actually has an amazing capacity
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4:49 - 4:53to store the carbon and provide us with a sequestration.
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4:53 - 4:57One cubic meter of wood will store
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4:57 - 4:59one tonne of carbon dioxide.
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4:59 - 5:02Now our two solutions to climate are obviously
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5:02 - 5:04to reduce our emissions and find storage.
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5:04 - 5:06Wood is the only major material building material
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5:06 - 5:10I can build with that actually does both those two things.
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5:10 - 5:13So I believe that we have
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5:13 - 5:16an ethic that the Earth grows our food,
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5:16 - 5:18and we need to move to an ethic in this century
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5:18 - 5:21that the Earth should grow our homes.
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5:21 - 5:22Now, how are we going to do that
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5:22 - 5:24when we're urbanizing at this rate
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5:24 - 5:26and we think about wood buildings only at four stories?
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5:26 - 5:29We need to reduce the concrete and steel and we need
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5:29 - 5:30to grow bigger, and what we've been working on
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5:30 - 5:35is 30-story tall buildings made of wood.
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5:35 - 5:39We've been engineering them with an engineer
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5:39 - 5:41named Eric Karsh who works with me on it,
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5:41 - 5:44and we've been doing this new work because
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5:44 - 5:46there are new wood products out there for us to use,
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5:46 - 5:48and we call them mass timber panels.
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5:48 - 5:51These are panels made with young trees,
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5:51 - 5:54small growth trees, small pieces of wood
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5:54 - 5:57glued together to make panels that are enormous:
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5:57 - 6:01eight feet wide, 64 feet long, and of various thicknesses.
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6:01 - 6:04The way I describe this best, I've found, is to say
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6:04 - 6:06that we're all used to two-by-four construction
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6:06 - 6:07when we think about wood.
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6:07 - 6:10That's what people jump to as a conclusion.
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6:10 - 6:12Two-by-four construction is sort of like the little
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6:12 - 6:14eight-dot bricks of Lego that we all played with as kids,
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6:14 - 6:17and you can make all kinds of cool things out of Lego
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6:17 - 6:20at that size, and out of two-by-fours.
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6:20 - 6:21But do remember when you were a kid,
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6:21 - 6:23and you kind of sifted through the pile in your basement,
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6:23 - 6:26and you found that big 24-dot brick of Lego,
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6:26 - 6:27and you were kind of like,
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6:27 - 6:29"Cool, this is awesome. I can build something really big,
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6:29 - 6:31and this is going to be great."
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6:31 - 6:32That's the change.
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6:32 - 6:35Mass timber panels are those 24-dot bricks.
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6:35 - 6:37They're changing the scale of what we can do,
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6:37 - 6:39and what we've developed is something we call FFTT,
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6:39 - 6:42which is a Creative Commons solution
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6:42 - 6:47to building a very flexible system
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6:47 - 6:49of building with these large panels where we tilt up
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6:49 - 6:53six stories at a time if we want to.
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6:53 - 6:57This animation shows you how the building goes together
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6:57 - 7:00in a very simple way, but these buildings are available
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7:00 - 7:03for architects and engineers now to build on
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7:03 - 7:04for different cultures in the world,
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7:04 - 7:07different architectural styles and characters.
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7:07 - 7:10In order for us to build safely,
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7:10 - 7:12we've engineered these buildings, actually,
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7:12 - 7:14to work in a Vancouver context,
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7:14 - 7:15where we're a high seismic zone,
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7:15 - 7:19even at 30 stories tall.
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7:19 - 7:20Now obviously, every time I bring this up,
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7:20 - 7:22people even, you know, here at the conference, say,
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7:22 - 7:25"Are you serious? Thirty stories? How's that going to happen?"
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7:25 - 7:29And there's a lot of really good questions that are asked
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7:29 - 7:31and important questions that we spent quite a long time
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7:31 - 7:33working on the answers to as we put together
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7:33 - 7:36our report and the peer reviewed report.
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7:36 - 7:37I'm just going to focus on a few of them,
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7:37 - 7:39and let's start with fire, because I think fire
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7:39 - 7:41is probably the first one that you're all thinking about right now.
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7:41 - 7:42Fair enough.
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7:42 - 7:44And the way I describe it is this.
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7:44 - 7:46If I asked you to take a match and light it
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7:46 - 7:50and hold up a log and try to get that log to go on fire,
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7:50 - 7:52it doesn't happen, right? We all know that.
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7:52 - 7:55But to build a fire, you kind of start with small pieces
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7:55 - 7:56of wood and you work your way up,
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7:56 - 7:59and eventually you can add the log to the fire,
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7:59 - 8:01and when you do add the log to the fire, of course,
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8:01 - 8:04it burns, but it burns slowly.
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8:04 - 8:06Well, mass timber panels, these new products
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8:06 - 8:08that we're using, are much like the log.
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8:08 - 8:11It's hard to start them on fire, and when they do,
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8:11 - 8:14they actually burn extraordinarily predictably,
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8:14 - 8:16and we can use fire science in order to predict
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8:16 - 8:18and make these buildings as safe as concrete
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8:18 - 8:21and as safe as steel.
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8:21 - 8:24The next big issue, deforestation.
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8:24 - 8:26Eighteen percent of our contribution
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8:26 - 8:28to greenhouse gas emissions worldwide
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8:28 - 8:30is the result of deforestation.
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8:30 - 8:33The last thing we want to do is cut down trees.
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8:33 - 8:37Or, the last thing we want to do is cut down the wrong trees.
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8:37 - 8:40There are models for sustainable forestry
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8:40 - 8:42that allow us to cut trees properly,
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8:42 - 8:44and those are the only trees appropriate
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8:44 - 8:46to use for these kinds of systems.
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8:46 - 8:48Now I actually think that these ideas
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8:48 - 8:52will change the economics of deforestation.
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8:52 - 8:54In countries with deforestation issues,
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8:54 - 8:56we need to find a way to provide
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8:56 - 8:59better value for the forest
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8:59 - 9:01and actually encourage people to make money
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9:01 - 9:03through very fast growth cycles --
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9:03 - 9:0610-, 12-, 15-year-old trees that make these products
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9:06 - 9:08and allow us to build at this scale.
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9:08 - 9:11We've calculated a 20-story building:
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9:11 - 9:14We'll grow enough wood in North America every 13 minutes.
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9:14 - 9:16That's how much it takes.
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9:16 - 9:19The carbon story here is a really a good one.
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9:19 - 9:23If we built a 20-story building out of cement and concrete,
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9:23 - 9:25the process would result in the manufacturing
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9:25 - 9:29of that cement and 1,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
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9:29 - 9:32If we did it in wood, in this solution,
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9:32 - 9:33we'd sequester about 3,100 tonnes,
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9:33 - 9:36for a net difference of 4,300 tonnes.
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9:36 - 9:39That's the equivalent of about 900 cars
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9:39 - 9:42removed from the road in one year.
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9:42 - 9:43Think back to that three billion people
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9:43 - 9:45that need a new home,
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9:45 - 9:48and maybe this is a contributor to reducing.
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9:48 - 9:50We're at the beginning of a revolution, I hope,
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9:50 - 9:52in the way we build, because this is the first new way
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9:52 - 9:57to build a skyscraper in probably 100 years or more.
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9:57 - 10:00But the challenge is changing society's perception
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10:00 - 10:02of possibility, and it's a huge challenge.
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10:02 - 10:05The engineering is, truthfully, the easy part of this.
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10:05 - 10:08And the way I describe it is this.
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10:08 - 10:10The first skyscraper, technically --
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10:10 - 10:12and the definition of a skyscraper is 10 stories tall, believe it or not —
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10:12 - 10:14but the first skyscraper was this one in Chicago,
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10:14 - 10:18and people were terrified to walk underneath this building.
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10:18 - 10:19But only four years after it was built,
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10:19 - 10:22Gustave Eiffel was building the Eiffel Tower,
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10:22 - 10:24and as he built the Eiffel Tower,
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10:24 - 10:28he changed the skylines of the cities of the world,
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10:28 - 10:31changed and created a competition
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10:31 - 10:34between places like New York City and Chicago,
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10:34 - 10:36where developers started building bigger and bigger buildings
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10:36 - 10:40and pushing the envelope up higher and higher
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10:40 - 10:42with better and better engineering.
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10:42 - 10:44We built this model in New York, actually,
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10:44 - 10:47as a theoretical model on the campus
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10:47 - 10:49of a technical university soon to come,
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10:49 - 10:51and the reason we picked this site
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10:51 - 10:54to just show you what these buildings may look like,
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10:54 - 10:55because the exterior can change.
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10:55 - 10:58It's really just the structure that we're talking about.
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10:58 - 11:01The reason we picked it is because this is a technical university,
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11:01 - 11:03and I believe that wood is the most
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11:03 - 11:07technologically advanced material I can build with.
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11:07 - 11:10It just happens to be that Mother Nature holds the patent,
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11:10 - 11:12and we don't really feel comfortable with it.
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11:12 - 11:14But that's the way it should be,
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11:14 - 11:18nature's fingerprints in the built environment.
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11:18 - 11:20I'm looking for this opportunity
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11:20 - 11:23to create an Eiffel Tower moment, we call it.
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11:23 - 11:25Buildings are starting to go up around the world.
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11:25 - 11:27There's a building in London that's nine stories,
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11:27 - 11:29a new building that just finished in Australia
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11:29 - 11:31that I believe is 10 or 11.
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11:31 - 11:35We're starting to push the height up of these wood buildings,
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11:35 - 11:37and we're hoping, and I'm hoping,
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11:37 - 11:40that my hometown of Vancouver actually potentially
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11:40 - 11:42announces the world's tallest at around 20 stories
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11:42 - 11:45in the not-so-distant future.
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11:45 - 11:48That Eiffel Tower moment will break the ceiling,
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11:48 - 11:49these arbitrary ceilings of height,
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11:49 - 11:52and allow wood buildings to join the competition.
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11:52 - 11:54And I believe the race is ultimately on.
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11:54 - 11:56Thank you.
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11:56 - 12:01(Applause)
- Title:
- Why we should build wooden skyscrapers
- Speaker:
- Michael Green
- Description:
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Building a skyscraper? Forget about steel and concrete, says architect Michael Green, and build it out of … wood. As he details in this intriguing talk, it's not only possible to build safe wooden structures up to 30 stories tall (and, he hopes, higher), it's necessary.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 12:22
Krystian Aparta edited English subtitles for Why we should build wooden skyscrapers | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Why we should build wooden skyscrapers | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for Why we should build wooden skyscrapers | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Why we should build wooden skyscrapers | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Why we should build wooden skyscrapers | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for Why we should build wooden skyscrapers | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Why we should build wooden skyscrapers | ||
Joseph Geni edited English subtitles for Why we should build wooden skyscrapers |