While interest in tall timber buildings continues to grow, there still remains one obvious concern: combustibility. So how safe are timber structures really? Arup Connect spoke with Robert Gerard, a fire engineer in Arup’s San Francisco office, to find out how high-rise wood buildings take fire safety into account.
Can you give a brief overview of recent developments in wooden buildings?
In the past 100 years, the use of wood has generally been limited to light timber framing, generally no more than three to six stories high — structurally, the practical limit for that type of construction. But in the past 10 to 15 years, the development of new heavy timber products — cross laminated timber (CLT), glued laminated wood (glulam), and laminated veneer lumber (LVL) — has opened the door to taller and bigger buildings with wood as the primary building material.
