Working with Oregon State University (OSU), Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) has been busy testing its design for a timber tower. The time-lapse video below shows a section of the wood tower being submitted to 82,000 pounds of pressure.
SOM has been working on the Timber Tower Research Project, funded by the Softwood Lumber Board (SLB) since 2013. The goal of the project is to develop safe, sustainable building technologies using mass-timber. Using timber may reduce a building’s embedded carbon footprint by as much as 60% to 70% compared to benchmark concrete building. The Timber Tower Research Project has developed a structural system called the Concrete Jointed Timber Frame that employs mass-timber elements with reinforced concrete connections.