The reinforced concrete house is old, people are building wooden skyscrapers

The skyscraper was built entirely of wood. The seemingly impossible thing is happening in the US state of Oregon.

Right now, more than 125 workers are working on gluing each wooden panel to build a skyscraper over 100 floors. This is not a tear-off project of first grade children, this is a fully-made building made entirely of wood.

In the city of Riddle in the US state of Oregon, a future home-building plan is underway. Workers are using glue to attach each piece of wood together to make a construction material for a skyscraper. Wood is harvested from nearby Douglas fir woods, the forests of pine trees have been around for thousands of years. Large wooden planks of 10 to 30 meters in length are compressed with compressed air as the main material to build this building.

Design image of wooden tower higher than 300m in London.

These wood-based construction materials are considered by the project owner to be the building material of the human future.

This material, called cross-laminated timber (CLT) , can be used to build a solid building, even compared with steel or cement to a degree of rigidity and Its fire resistance. With its environment-friendly nature, this new material is considered by architecture engineers and environmentalists as the future of the construction industry. It is a more environmentally friendly method of building houses, as well as a solution to building houses in the current population boom. Besides, it is possible to open up a market of wooden building materials, creating jobs for thousands of carpenters.

"We see a very promising future with this new construction material," said Valerie Johnson, co-owner of DR Johnson Wood Innovations, with her mother and sister. Their company has 125 carpenters working at a traditional wood-making and pressing factory, where the Johnson family has expanded to more than 1200 square meters to develop the production of new wood materials .

She provides samples for builders as well as material producers so that they can assess the necessary requirements such as resistance to fire or sound insulation. Currently, there are three Union Wood Processing companies in North America that allow the production of CLT wood for construction, including the company of the Johnson family and two other Canadian companies.

Valerie Johnson, owner of DR Johnson Wood Innovations.

The production of CLT wood and the production of processed wooden items was pioneered in Europe in the 1990s, to replace the use of large concrete blocks in house construction for households. Using wood doesn't emit carbon into the environment , while the production of cement releases a large amount of carbon, making global warming worse. In addition, the construction of houses using CLT will mainly assemble pre-made parts, thereby increasing construction speed significantly and reducing labor costs.

And so, the race to build the world's tallest wooden building begins. Two buildings are expected to be built: a 100-storey tower in London and a 40-storey building in Stockholm will have a different appearance from the traditional builder.

Design image of wooden building in Stockholm.

But there is a huge gap between paper drawings and a complete wooden building. The cost of providing to build such a building is an obstacle and most likely the blueprint will not be passed. But some examples in recent years have gradually cleared that gap, some buildings in Australia, Norway and even the UK built of wood have all been recognized as the highest wooden buildings present, all have a height of at least 10 floors.

This has attracted investors and architects throughout Europe and America. In 2013, architect Michael Green had an analysis video about this future material. In the same year, SOM - an architectural firm in Chigao also made the design of a 42-storey high wooden building very feasible. And last year, the US Department of Agriculture awarded grants for the construction of wooden high-rise buildings in New York as well as in Portland, Oregon.

The next challenge was to obtain a permit to build a building made of wood only. It is meant to demonstrate that the wood material is fire resistant and can minimize external noise such as other construction materials.

In addition, there are other problems such as whether people really feel secure when living and working in such wooden buildings, or where the wood provided for construction materials will be taken from, when which produces a large amount of such wood materials.

14-storey wooden building in Norway.

"It may take some time to build a new infrastructure to compete with the materials still being used in construction , " said Thomas Maness, head of the Forestry Department at the State University. Oregon.

However, if the production of this new material could create a production wave in the United States, the Johnson family and their company would have an extremely strong foothold. During the past 50 years, the family's company has produced rafters with glue, which can create large pillars when joining together 2 to 4 bars. The largest bar they created was 2.7 meters wide and more than 42 meters high, used in hydraulic engineering in the North Dakota.

With these experiences, the company had money to produce CLT wood materials, although it still had many parts to be completed as well as new production equipment needed. Johnson started out with a new laminate sheet at the end of 2014 and produced the first products, a 4-storey building in Portland in February. And now, the company is installing a machine system to make big boards and aiming for new projects in the future.

Ms. Johnson said: "If you look at architecture, design or construction, you will see very few pioneers paving the way in any field, those pioneers are us. It is rare for you to take the first steps in a field. "