Wooden skyscrapers could be the future for cities | The Economist

In the future will skyscrapers be made from wood?
未來的摩天大樓會由木頭製成嗎?

By 2050, the world's population is expected to soar to almost 10 billion people. 
全球人口數預期將會在2050年飆升至1000億

And two-thirds of us will live in cities.
然後三分之二的人會居住在城市裡

Space will be at a premium.
居住空間會變得非常珍貴

High-rise offers a solution. 
高樓建築是個解決方案

But concrete and steel, the materials we currently use to build high have a large carbon footprint.
但我們目前建構高樓所使用的混凝土和鋼鐵會產生大量的碳足跡

An answer might lie in a natural material we've used for millennia.
我們千年來所運用的天然材料可能就是解答

Our view is that all buildings should be made of timber.
我們認為應該是使用木材來建造房屋

We think that we should be looking at concrete and steel like we look at petrol and diesel.
我們對於混凝土和鋼鐵的想法就應該如同看待汽油和柴油般

I think it's very realistic to think that someone will build a wooden skyscraper in the coming years, there's a lot of potential that's unrealised for using timber at a very large scale.
未來有人將會使用木頭打造摩天大樓是務實的想法，目前仍有許多運用木材的潛能尚未顯現

Throughout history buildings have been made of wood.
在整個歷史上房屋都是木製的

But it has one major drawback. 
但它有一個嚴重的不利因素

It acts as kindling.
它扮演著引火物

Fire has destroyed large swathes of some of the world's great cities. 
大火曾經摧毀全球重要城市的大塊區域

LONDON-1666
1666年倫敦大火

CHICAGO-1871
1871年芝加哥大火

TOKYO-1923
1923年東京大火

But by the early 20th century the era of modern steelmaking had arrived.
但現代煉鋼時期在20世紀初期登場

Steel was strong to be molded into any shape and used to reinforce concrete. 
堅硬的鋼鐵可以被塑造成任何形狀來強化混凝土

It allowed architects to build higher than ever before.
它允許建築師打造超越以往高度的大樓

So why after more than a century of concrete and steel are some architects proposing a return to wood. 
所以為什麼要在使用混凝土和鋼鐵一世紀後重新提起木材?

If concrete were to arrive as a new material on Dragon's Den.
假設混凝土以新材料方式在龍穴登場

If you were to pitch in and say I've got this brand-new material it's liquid and you can pour it
into any shape and it'll solidify, that sounds great.
如果你要推銷這個全新液體材料，你可以將它倒入任何形狀內然後讓它自己凝固，這聽起來很完美

But then when you say but we need a whole new fleet of trucks to move it around, and actually when it solidifies it's not strong enough we have to stick this other stuff in, it called steel.
但當你補充說明它需要新卡車隊來運輸而且固化後還不夠堅固所以還需要加入鋼鐵

I don't think it would be a compelling case.
我不認為這具有任何說服力

Concrete and steel are costly to produce and heavy to transport.
生產混凝土和鋼鐵的費用很高而且不好運送

Wood however can be grown sustainably and it's lighter than concrete.
另一方面，木頭可以長期地穩定生長而且比混凝土輕

And crucially as trees grow they absorb carbon dioxide from the air locking it into the timber. 
關鍵的是當樹木生長時會從空氣中吸取二氧化碳並將其鎖進木材

One study showed that using wood to construct a 125 meter skyscraper could reduce the building's carbon footprint by up to 75%.
一項研究顯示使用木頭來建造1萬2千5百公分高的摩天大樓可以降低高達75%的碳足跡

Regular timber isn't malleable like steel or concrete, and it isn't strong enough to build high but engineers have come up with a solution.
一般木材不像混凝土和鋼鐵是可塑的而且用來蓋大樓也不夠堅硬但是工程師想到解決方法

It's called cross laminated timber or CLT for short. 
它就是錯層壓木材或是簡稱CLT

It's basically a new material even though the underlying material is something we've used for
millennia.
基本上它就是個全新材料即便我們長期地在使用它的基礎原料

It's cross laminated so the layers wood are glued at 90 degrees to each other and that makes for a very very stable material.
它是錯層的所以木頭是90度交叉地黏附在一起也就衍生了極為穩固的材料

CLT is light and it's comparable in strength to concrete and steel. 
CLT很輕巧而且擁有可以與混凝土和鋼鐵比擬的堅固性

But how does it cope when burnt with a high heat source?
但當它遇到高熱源所引生的燃燒點時該如何應對?

The charred wood is extremely insulating that's the trees natural protection against a forest fire.
炭化木材非常地隔熱，這正是樹木可以存活森林大火的自我保護法則

It chars, it loses some of its structural mass, but when you remove the source of flame, it extinguishes itself. 
當它被火燃燒時會失去一些結構質量但是當你移除火源後，它會自動熄滅

When steel gets hot it gets a bit softer, we've actually seen some steel roofs collapse in fires where wooden roofs have not.
當鋼鐵加溫時會變得比較柔和，我們曾經目睹某些鋼屋頂在大火裡倒塌；反觀木製屋頂仍舊屹立不搖

London architects Waugh Thistleton are already designing buildings with this new kind of timber.
英國建築設計團隊 "Waugh Thistleton Architects" 已經開始使用這個新品種木材

There's a CLT building behind where the timber building sits behind timber clad and then there's a really simple galvanized steel walkway.
錯層壓木材製建築後方是一棟木材製大樓然後有條簡單的鋅鍍走道
Cross laminated timber is a material that we work with a lot.
我們大量地運用錯層壓木材

Once these panels arrive on-site we're building you know a floor a week at least,so this is incredibly fast this is maybe twice as fast as concrete.
當那些建築牆板抵達時，我們基本上一個禮拜可以完成一樓層所以這大概比用混凝土要快上兩倍

Because when you build a concrete building what we call concrete buildings are actually floor slabs and columns.
因為當你建構水泥大樓時，所謂的水泥大樓實際上就是水泥板和圓柱

When we be able to cross laminated in the building it's for building floor slabs, all the external walls, all the internal walls, the lift calls, the stairs, the stair cores, everything's made of timber so these are like honeycomb structures. 
當我們可以使用錯層壓木材在水泥板、所有外牆、內牆、電梯、樓梯、樓梯中心時，所有東西都是木製的就好比蜂窩結構

Andrew and his colleagues designed Britain's first high-rise wooden apartment block and have recently completed the world's largest timber based building.
Andrew與他的同事設計出英國史上第一木製住宅高樓並在近期完成全球最龐大的木材製建築物

Behind these bricks is a timber core made from more than 2,000 trees sourced from sustainable forests.
隱藏在這些磚塊背後的是來自永續森林的2000多種樹木所打造出的木製建築

And this London practice is not alone in advocating the use of CLT.
而且倫敦在呼籲實施錯層壓木材作法上並不孤單

Ambitious wooden high-rise buildings are also being constructed in Scandinavia, Central Europe and North America.
斯勘的納維亞、中歐以及北美洲都在打造野心勃勃的木製高樓

As yet nobody has used CLT to build beyond 55 metres.
目前為止尚未有人使用CLT建構超越55米高的大樓

But Michael Ramage's Research Center in Cambridge working with another London practice has proposed a concept design of a 300 metre tower to be built on top of one of London's most iconic concrete structures, the Barbican.
但是位於劍橋的Michael Ramage研究中心正在與倫敦其他業務合作並提議在倫敦最著名的混凝土結構也就是巴比肯屋村建造300米高的塔樓

The way we've engineered the Oakwood tower is to look at the the global structure and is it stable and would it stand up? 
我們設計奧克伍鐵塔的前提是考量它的全球結構，它夠穩定嗎、有辦法站立嗎?
And we believe the answer is yes. 
我們認為是可行的

The columns at the base of the Oakwood tower would be about 2.5 meters square so that's solid timber made of small elements glued together.
奧克伍鐵塔的圓柱面積大約是2.5平方公尺所以是將小元素黏合在一起的結實木材

I think we'll probably see incremental increases from the current height of about 50 metres and at some point someone will make a step change probably to about a hundred meters.
我想我們會逐漸看到超越50米高的建築物，而且總有一天有人會大躍進地挑戰將近100米

Making that jump in height will be a difficult sell, the cost of building wooden skyscrapers is
largely unknown, but those costs could be reduced by pre fabricating large sections of buildings in factories. 
一夕之間要達成如此高度是很艱難的挑戰，很難去確認建造木製摩天大樓所需的花費但如果提前由工廠打造建築物的大面積部份應該可以降低費用

And city dwellers will need to be persuaded that CLT does not burn like ordinary wood.
而城市居民需要意識到錯層壓木材的耐熱度遠遠超過一般木材

As an attractive natural material, wood is already popular for use in low buildings.
木頭本身就是具有吸引力的天然材料而且也被廣泛地運用在矮建築物上

If planners approve it could rise to new heights.
如果設計師同意的話就可以將高度提升

 

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