Timber Towers

Perspective of timber tower prototype
SOM

First Michael Green, an architect from Vancouver BC, published the Case for Tall Wood Buildings that argued that tall wood buildings are feasible and have substantial economic and environmental benefits. Now SOM has taken up the challenge with the Timber Tower Research Project,  which debuts a prototypical tower with a  concrete jointed timber frame system.  It will be interesting to see framing carpenters working on tall buildings instead of steel workers. For the Pacific Northwest, it opens up a chapter of using our local wood resources for building 20-30 story buildings.  So far no local takers on using this technology, as it appears that talks for using this new building technology are in Canada and Austria. Seems to me that Portland has a potentially large stake in this structural type.  Why not create an iconic building using this system here?