Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, say there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, isn't it good?
Speaker 1: Norwegian would? I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Bogbon, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And today, yeah, what what what are we
Speaker 1: doing today, Lauren? Today we're talking more about the building
Speaker 1: materials of the future. We've threatened to do it, and
Speaker 1: now we're making good on that threat. Yes. In April sixteen,
Speaker 1: we published an episode called Building Materials of the Future
Speaker 1: colin Bio Edition, um and uh yeah, so that we
Speaker 1: would return to the topic of construction materials science at
Speaker 1: some point, because in that episode we went, okay, we
Speaker 1: we a went really deep into the problems with concrete
Speaker 1: and cement, which are largely environmental um and and we
Speaker 1: also went into a couple of potential alternatives to concrete,
Speaker 1: including a materials built by bacteria or fungus, or materials
Speaker 1: made in part with hemp or wool or seaweed or
Speaker 1: animal blood. Oh yeah, the blood bricks, those are good. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking about bricks made of wool and Minecraft
Speaker 1: right now, it's just it's always but then I have
Speaker 1: to be fair. Minecraft is always close at the top
Speaker 1: of my mind. Do they have bricks made of blood? No,
Speaker 1: but you can't make brakes made out of wool. Did
Speaker 1: we have the same conversation last time. I think we did,
Speaker 1: and I talked about how in a thunderstorm, if lightning
Speaker 1: strikes your wool structure, it will catch on fire and
Speaker 1: burned out. But at any rate, one of the things
Speaker 1: that drove that discussion was that if you look into
Speaker 1: how much it costs US an energy and and in
Speaker 1: carbon emissions to make concrete and cement, it is not
Speaker 1: a trivial amount. According to the U s Energy Information Administration,
Speaker 1: if you choose to believe them, the cement industry accounted
Speaker 1: for a quarter of one percent of national energy consumption
Speaker 1: in the United States. And and that that sounds like
Speaker 1: it's small. You're talking about one quarter of one percent,
Speaker 1: but that's total energy consumption, which is a huge number.
Speaker 1: So it's a slightly less huge number. Yeah, And to
Speaker 1: put it into another perspective that that accounts for like
Speaker 1: ten times it's fair share of energy consumption compared to
Speaker 1: its its output in terms of gross national goods and
Speaker 1: services in the United States. Right, So it's economic value, right,
Speaker 1: It's economic value is much lower than the energy value
Speaker 1: we're pouring into it compared to other industries. And by
Speaker 1: that very nature, that's what got us talking about, well,
Speaker 1: why are we still using it and are we looking
Speaker 1: into anything else? Well, the reason we're still using it
Speaker 1: is that it's it's the it's very useful. It's it's useful,
Speaker 1: and there's an established industry, there's an established infrastructure for it.
Speaker 1: So you know, there are reasons why we're using it.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of reasons that people are
Speaker 1: looking into alternatives because of this energy requirement, the fact
Speaker 1: that the carbon emissions are pretty high, and that transporting
Speaker 1: this stuff is not cheap either. And so so there
Speaker 1: are lots of other materials that we didn't get around
Speaker 1: to covering in the last episode, and let's get into
Speaker 1: a few of them today. How about would would Well, wait,
Speaker 1: we already use wood to build things, but this is
Speaker 1: a little bit different, isn't it. We're gonna use more
Speaker 1: wood better, future, would better? Better? Better? With more wood? Now,
Speaker 1: please timber things. It sounds like I've just had a
Speaker 1: complete brain event, but No, seriously, one of the building
Speaker 1: materials of the future may very well just be be
Speaker 1: would But well, I say, just, but that's not really true.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a new type of wood that goes
Speaker 1: through a specific manufacturing process so that it increases its
Speaker 1: strength and its resistance to stuff like fire, which is
Speaker 1: important and allows it to hold a much heavier load
Speaker 1: than say your traditional wooden house. Right, So the way
Speaker 1: we use wooden construction today is for small scale construction
Speaker 1: a couple of stories. Maybe there's no reason not to
Speaker 1: build a wooden house. But once you're talking about high
Speaker 1: density occupancy, that's where our big large scale industrial building
Speaker 1: materials like steel, concrete, cement, Uh, they sort of take over.
Speaker 1: Like when you're we're building tall buildings in an urban environment,
Speaker 1: and tall buildings and urban environments is kind of where
Speaker 1: we're going with buildings. As we have talked on this
Speaker 1: podcast about the floor. Yeah, there's a worldwide urbanization trend.
Speaker 1: People are moving into the city's and packing them in right,
Speaker 1: and being able to build up helps take care of
Speaker 1: this density problem as opposed to sprawling further and further
Speaker 1: out from a city center, which can come with a
Speaker 1: lot of different problems that we in Atlanta are very wilier.
Speaker 1: With all that good infrastructure stuff transport and water and
Speaker 1: et cetera, you'll see a lot of other things, uh,
Speaker 1: increase in cost because of that. So being able to
Speaker 1: build upward has a lot of different benefits. So we're
Speaker 1: actually seeing a project. It's a it's a cooperation between
Speaker 1: Cambridge University's Department about Architecture and p LP ARCHICHEC Tecture
Speaker 1: and engineers Smith and Walwork and they're working on an
Speaker 1: eighty story building that would be three or four feet
Speaker 1: tall made out of timber. Essentially. That sounds pretty crazy,
Speaker 1: it's it's The project is being called the Oakwood Tower.
Speaker 1: Um it would be if it was If it goes
Speaker 1: on to be to be built, it will be the
Speaker 1: second tallest building in London after only the Shard. You know,
Speaker 1: I used to live in Oakwood, but that was Oakwood, Georgia.
Speaker 1: So you might wonder like, well, why are we even
Speaker 1: looking at Wood again, What's what's the big deal? Why
Speaker 1: why appear to take a step backward in human architecture.
Speaker 1: But actually, as it turns out, Wood has got a
Speaker 1: lot of things going for it. For one thing, it's
Speaker 1: a renewable resource. That's a big one, right, as long
Speaker 1: as you harvest it responsibly. Yeah, and plant more trees
Speaker 1: right right, exactly. Yeah, you have to have good stewardship
Speaker 1: of forests in order for this to be a truly
Speaker 1: renewable resource and not having a net negative impact. But
Speaker 1: it would potentially be a much better resource than some
Speaker 1: of the other alternatives. Also, if you were to process
Speaker 1: the wood properly, you're talking about building material that would
Speaker 1: ultimately create a building that could weigh less so it
Speaker 1: produces less of a strain on the area around it. Uh,
Speaker 1: it would cost less, it would take less time to
Speaker 1: build these these structures actually go up pretty fast, um,
Speaker 1: and it could be uh more resistant to fire actually,
Speaker 1: which is a little weird to think of when you're
Speaker 1: talking about we're lying so alright, So the way I've
Speaker 1: seen it described is that the way this wood is made,
Speaker 1: you get a char that's on the outside of the wood.
Speaker 1: But it is very difficult for fire to penetrate further
Speaker 1: in than the surface. Given however many layers of would
Speaker 1: you have, and the more layers of would you have,
Speaker 1: the more time it would take for the fire to
Speaker 1: actually penetrate and burn through, right, because we're not talking
Speaker 1: about about just a big old block of wood from
Speaker 1: a single tree. Obviously, perhaps because if you're talking about
Speaker 1: a thousand foot high skyscraper, that's a much larger tree
Speaker 1: than I've personally seen. Um but uh but but yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're you're talking about wood composed in layers. And
Speaker 1: also yeah, like like the natural tendency of a char
Speaker 1: on the outside of wood acts as a protective layer
Speaker 1: against the stuff further inside. Right, So in these circumstances,
Speaker 1: with a large enough item of wood, yeah, you could
Speaker 1: also have treated wood as well, which would make it
Speaker 1: even more fire resistant. And this is all very important
Speaker 1: because so so a lot of this work is being done.
Speaker 1: Like we said, in London, let me tell you a
Speaker 1: little bit about London wooden buildings and fire. There was
Speaker 1: a little event in sixteen sixty six, the Great Fire
Speaker 1: of London. London was devastated by this fire. More than
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand houses were destroyed, uh somewhere almost like seven
Speaker 1: different major churches and landmarks were destroyed. I think I
Speaker 1: remember reading Samuel Peep's diary entry about this. Did he
Speaker 1: have one? It was it about a different fire? Maybe
Speaker 1: I'd have to, I would have to do more research
Speaker 1: to tell you that. The fact on that I can
Speaker 1: tell you that there were only six recorded deaths. Now,
Speaker 1: there were probably a lot more that didn't go recorded,
Speaker 1: but there are only six recorded deaths that were connected
Speaker 1: to the sixteen sixty six Great Fire of London. There
Speaker 1: were a lot of reasons why this fire was able
Speaker 1: to rage out of control and caused so much devastation.
Speaker 1: A big one was that London at that time had
Speaker 1: no official organized fire brigade. It's a huge drawback. Um.
Speaker 1: But another big one was that a lot of the
Speaker 1: buildings were made out of wood and they were very
Speaker 1: close together. If you've ever been through any of the
Speaker 1: historic areas of England and you see like the like,
Speaker 1: you'll see these super narrow alleyways where buildings will actually
Speaker 1: touch above the alley, they'll be in contact with each other.
Speaker 1: And that's how London at the time looked, and so
Speaker 1: fire could spread very easily from from house to house
Speaker 1: because they were pretty much in contact with one another. UM.
Speaker 1: So things are different now, obviously, and the actual timber
Speaker 1: we're using is different now. Very important when you're talking
Speaker 1: about a city that one of its defining historical moments
Speaker 1: was a massive fire, and certainly other cities as well
Speaker 1: have sure, yeah, Chicago has had a massive one as well.
Speaker 1: Planta is a little bit upset about it still, Yeah, Atlanta,
Speaker 1: who was a purposefully set fire. But yes, yeah. Another
Speaker 1: possible benefit to using wood as opposed to other materials
Speaker 1: is really aesthetic. According to the project leaders, the Brits
Speaker 1: might be more receptive to taller buildings if they're made
Speaker 1: out of natural materials rather than concrete. Here's where we
Speaker 1: get a little touchy feely, because they say, like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know how sometimes you go outside and it just
Speaker 1: feels nice. I wouldn't be great if it felt nice
Speaker 1: when you win inside. What if we talk the stuff
Speaker 1: that's outside and put it inside, then inside would be
Speaker 1: nice like the outside. I'm being a little facetious, but
Speaker 1: that's kind of how it comes across. And there is
Speaker 1: science behind this, like feeling of nice science it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So there have been studies, I'll say that now. According
Speaker 1: to a piece on the University of Cambridge website, recent
Speaker 1: studies have shown that timber buildings can have a positive
Speaker 1: health effect, and from an armchair psychology perspective, it certainly
Speaker 1: seems intuitive right, the idea that you could have this
Speaker 1: a natural setting or a more natural setting may feel
Speaker 1: more relaxing than a very sterile, you know, artificial synthetic setting. UM,
Speaker 1: but it's it's hard to say, like is that true
Speaker 1: or is that just uh an intuition that may or
Speaker 1: may not have any founding in science. Well, one of
Speaker 1: those studies was conducted by the University of British Columbia
Speaker 1: and FP Innovations. But to be fair, FP Innovations is
Speaker 1: a nonprofit Canadian organization that's closely tied to the forest industry,
Speaker 1: So you gotta keep that in mind, like who is
Speaker 1: the person, Like what are the entities that are sponsoring
Speaker 1: and conducting the study and do they have a vested
Speaker 1: interest in the outcome? But the study claims that would
Speaker 1: surfaces lower the sympathetic nervous system activation UH, the S
Speaker 1: and S in other words, so that means that areas
Speaker 1: with wind services tend to be more relaxing and can
Speaker 1: help with stress management, which in turn can have a
Speaker 1: positive impact on health in general. We've done episodes about
Speaker 1: the future of stress, and it is clear stress UH,
Speaker 1: certain types of stress affected by the environment, and and
Speaker 1: they can have a very powerful effect on your health
Speaker 1: and well being. So that's that's not in question. So
Speaker 1: in the study, what they ended up doing was they
Speaker 1: held an experiment. They had four different office environments with
Speaker 1: varying levels of artificial versus natural kind of surfaces, like
Speaker 1: wood surfaces and like. Some had a couple of accents
Speaker 1: that were made out of wood. There was one where
Speaker 1: like the shades were all made out of wood, the table,
Speaker 1: the desk was would they had plants in the room.
Speaker 1: There was another one that was made out of things
Speaker 1: like painted press board, you know that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So they had a different range um that they could
Speaker 1: put the various test subjects into. Those test subjects were
Speaker 1: one nineteen university students, And I wrote in the notes,
Speaker 1: I'm always in favor of doing mental health tests on
Speaker 1: univer city students. That's what they're there for. Uh, And
Speaker 1: it is what most mental health tests are done on. Yeah. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: if it weren't for university students, science would be lacking.
Speaker 1: Maybe I shouldn't have said mental health psychology behavioral psychology,
Speaker 1: especially to be fair. To be fair, I I said
Speaker 1: mental health is more or less kind of a tongue
Speaker 1: in cheek snarky comment on this, but behavioral psychology would
Speaker 1: be much more accurate. So each student was assigned to
Speaker 1: one of those four types of office environments. No one
Speaker 1: was told what the study was about specifically. Uh So
Speaker 1: they had no idea what they were, what was going
Speaker 1: to be measured, or how it would be measured. So
Speaker 1: that was, you know, it's at least a single blind.
Speaker 1: I don't know that. I don't think it was double blind.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that people administering the test knew what
Speaker 1: was going on. Uh So they had like skin contact
Speaker 1: sensors put on to kind of uh detect when there
Speaker 1: were spikes in stress. You know, the idea being that
Speaker 1: if you detect sweat, someone's obviously feeling a little more
Speaker 1: stress than someone who isn't sweating that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So they put these students in one of those four
Speaker 1: office environments. Each student then had to go through three phases,
Speaker 1: again not being told what was happening or why it
Speaker 1: was happening. The first phase was they were left alone
Speaker 1: for ten minutes in the room, which actually had their
Speaker 1: their anxiety start to climb because they're sitting there wondering
Speaker 1: what's going to happen to them they don't know. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then the next phase was that they had to take
Speaker 1: an audio mathematic test, so they're listening to math problems
Speaker 1: and having to work on them. This this was in
Speaker 1: order to again increase their level of anxiety. Let's see
Speaker 1: what happens when we take the puppy away. Um. And
Speaker 1: then at the end they were left alone again to
Speaker 1: kind of decompress, to to recover from the stressful experience
Speaker 1: they just had. And UH. All the data would be
Speaker 1: analyzed later. And according to the researchers, the S and
Speaker 1: S activation was lowest in office environ mints that had
Speaker 1: wood services and furnishings. Uh. And they were lowest during
Speaker 1: all three phases. So it didn't matter if you're talking
Speaker 1: about the initial phase, the actual test, or the distressing part.
Speaker 1: Those layers were all lower in the for students who
Speaker 1: were in the the office environment that had the wood
Speaker 1: surfaces in them. But we gotta keep in mind it
Speaker 1: was a small study. Hundred nineteen people's not a lot
Speaker 1: in the grand scheme of science. Uh. And it also
Speaker 1: had vested parties that were involved in the administration of
Speaker 1: this test. And that doesn't mean that the test is invalid.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that the conclusions are wrong. It just
Speaker 1: means we have to keep that in mind when we
Speaker 1: hear this and not just say all right, well case closed,
Speaker 1: it's definite. Now, well, you know, one thing I would
Speaker 1: think is, uh, I was just running through this in
Speaker 1: my mind, wondering how I would feel in different different
Speaker 1: material environments as far as stress goes trying to do
Speaker 1: math problems, and I would think, you know, I wonder
Speaker 1: if environments that are most like the environments where I
Speaker 1: went to school would be the most stressful, uh so like,
Speaker 1: and that would not be wooden environments, so that could
Speaker 1: be another you know, like associations. I mean there there's definitely,
Speaker 1: again the gut feeling type of stuff. There's definitely some
Speaker 1: stuff that makes me feel that they're onto something here.
Speaker 1: Even if I don't go so far as to say
Speaker 1: this definitively proves to me that that their hypothesis holds water,
Speaker 1: because I think of experiences if I had going to
Speaker 1: like a rustic cabin and breathing in the smell of
Speaker 1: like you can smell the wood and and it has
Speaker 1: that very warm tone to it, like there is something
Speaker 1: very kind of termites, There is something kind of cozy
Speaker 1: and relaxing about that. And uh, it's just the question
Speaker 1: of is that in fact something that is scientifically supportable
Speaker 1: or is it just like you know, does it have
Speaker 1: no bearing whatsoever. Well, I mean another way you could
Speaker 1: look at this is you wouldn't even have to get
Speaker 1: to the level of science and talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: scientifically measurable effects on stress. You could just say what
Speaker 1: what do people like? More more people would tell you, yeah,
Speaker 1: I like wooden environment. What's what's aesthetic? And uh and
Speaker 1: and there are certainly lots of kind of bunk psychology
Speaker 1: experiments into into the esthetics of an environment, in the
Speaker 1: in the color tones of an environment that are going
Speaker 1: to inform uh, you know, your opinion one way or another,
Speaker 1: at least your opinion of the scientists. That's fair. I
Speaker 1: often think of like my like, I like I like
Speaker 1: the whole cabin get away kind of thing, Like I
Speaker 1: I enjoy that experience, and I enjoy that environment. My
Speaker 1: wife has a preference for very modern kind of architecture
Speaker 1: and furnishings, which don't necessarily fall into that same category.
Speaker 1: But that's what she finds really relaxing. So it doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean that you know, the science is wrong or whatever.
Speaker 1: It just may be more complicated than this hypothesis or
Speaker 1: it maybe that's totally correct. It's just a study with
Speaker 1: a hundred nineteen people. It's hard to say at any rate.
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about what makes
Speaker 1: this particular type of wood so strong. We we mentioned
Speaker 1: that it's lots of different layers. Um. We're specifically talking
Speaker 1: about a type of wood product, industrial wood product called
Speaker 1: cross laminated timber or c LT. And you're starting to
Speaker 1: see this being used in the UK and Canada fairly extensively.
Speaker 1: It's starting to get adopted more widely in the United States,
Speaker 1: especially since it's the possibility of of having a new
Speaker 1: industry in the U S where you could, again with
Speaker 1: good stewardship of forests, you have a new export you
Speaker 1: could create for construction materials. So how is this stuff made?
Speaker 1: It's really cool? So al right, well, first of all,
Speaker 1: you have to cut down trees. We haven't figured out
Speaker 1: a way of making stuff out of wood without doing that,
Speaker 1: so that's step one. But then you have to make
Speaker 1: boards out of the trees. Um, and then you dry
Speaker 1: the boards in a kiln. Oh okay, well, but there
Speaker 1: you're introducing some energy requirements, probably not to the same
Speaker 1: extent that you would be using in the creation of cement,
Speaker 1: right because you're drying it out. Obviously, if you were
Speaker 1: to increase the heat too much, you would have some
Speaker 1: issues there. But yes, well, I'm just saying part of
Speaker 1: what we're trying to avoid is like all of the
Speaker 1: energy absolutely burning the cement for such a long time
Speaker 1: and such a high heat use it. Yeah, my my
Speaker 1: guess is that the kilns that used to dry boards
Speaker 1: are operating at significantly lower temperatures and for less time
Speaker 1: than for cement. But then you take the boards and
Speaker 1: uh so you put them so that the grain alternates
Speaker 1: by ninety degrees level by level. So some boards are gonna,
Speaker 1: like all the boards are gonna be the same dimension,
Speaker 1: but in some you're gonna have the grain going along
Speaker 1: the long side and some some you're gonna have the
Speaker 1: grain going along the narrow side. So you stacks stack
Speaker 1: them with the grain alternating ninety degrees um. You make
Speaker 1: an odd numbered stack of boards, usually between three and seven.
Speaker 1: You glue them together using a special type of adhesive,
Speaker 1: and then you put it through a pneumatic press to
Speaker 1: press the board together and this creates a much stronger
Speaker 1: material that is still relatively light compared to alternatives, but
Speaker 1: compared to regular wood, it's more dense. And yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and so uh and like I said, this stuff can
Speaker 1: go up pretty fast. Actually watched a video where a
Speaker 1: guy was talking about the process of building with the stuff.
Speaker 1: I was trying to I was thinking he was going
Speaker 1: to talk about the process of making it. No, he
Speaker 1: was talking about using it to actually build. And what
Speaker 1: was fascinating to me was he said, so these panels,
Speaker 1: and the panels were huge, they were like maybe like
Speaker 1: you know, there were several feet wide and many more
Speaker 1: feet long. So we can put one of these up
Speaker 1: every seven to eight minutes. So building a structure out
Speaker 1: of that material goes pretty quickly compared to other types
Speaker 1: of materials. So that's one of those huge advantages. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and c LT isn't the only type of wood product
Speaker 1: that's being investigated for for wooden buildings. UM glued slabs
Speaker 1: of bamboo are also being looked at, and different treatments
Speaker 1: for different types of wood can make them stronger or stiffer,
Speaker 1: a distinction that we're going to talk about a little
Speaker 1: bit later on. UM or more resistant to fungus, which
Speaker 1: is great to be if your would in a building.
Speaker 1: Um and and some theorists, theorists in the industry are
Speaker 1: are even imagining. Sorry, I just thought fungus is in nature.
Speaker 1: You know, if nature makes people feel better, maybe you
Speaker 1: need some fungus in your building. I mean packs packs
Speaker 1: of wolves are in nature to bring them on. Are
Speaker 1: you sure, I kind of I mean puppy dogs. Um, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so so some some theorists are even imagining that that
Speaker 1: that GMO trees could be genetically constructed to provide ultimate
Speaker 1: building materials in the future. This has never entered my mind,
Speaker 1: so I've thought tons about GMO crops. How do you
Speaker 1: know how to alter the genes of of food crops
Speaker 1: to make them, you know, have higher yields or more
Speaker 1: resistant to herbicides or something like that. But yeah, you
Speaker 1: could totally alter the genes of trees to produce a
Speaker 1: different kind of timber if you want to. Yeah, something
Speaker 1: with with more stronger, better cellulose, which is really the
Speaker 1: structure that we're talking about in terms of the benefits
Speaker 1: of wood. I'm just thinking of genetically modifying mushrooms so
Speaker 1: that smurfs could live in them also lovely. So here's
Speaker 1: the question. We we've talked about the possibility of going
Speaker 1: back to using wood as a major component in building,
Speaker 1: including skyscrapers, which if you had told me about a
Speaker 1: few years ago, I thought would have thought it was crazy. Um,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense. Is it actually more sustainable and
Speaker 1: more environmentally friendly than the traditional concrete and steel stuff
Speaker 1: that skyscrapers are made out of today? Well, okay. Proponents
Speaker 1: say that if if wooden construction like this takes off,
Speaker 1: or rather takes off again, UM, trees could be specifically
Speaker 1: farmed for for this type of use over long periods,
Speaker 1: so so you know, you wouldn't be destroying the rainforest
Speaker 1: every time you wanted to erect a new apartment building. UM.
Speaker 1: And furthermore, since we're using less and less paper, UM,
Speaker 1: old paper timber farms could be applied to the trade
Speaker 1: in the meanwhile, while while we're getting our tree farms
Speaker 1: up to up to standard. UM. Furthermore, people say that,
Speaker 1: you know, trees are used to store carbon dioxide while
Speaker 1: they're alive, and they retain it when they're dead, So
Speaker 1: so you're helping keep some carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: you've you've you've locked that carbon dioxide away, and you're
Speaker 1: growing more trees to replace the ones you've used, so
Speaker 1: you're technically removing CEO two from the atmosphere in that approach. Also,
Speaker 1: in terms of g usage, WOULD is a better insulator
Speaker 1: than concrete or glass, or steel or aluminum, and I
Speaker 1: mean meaning that it has a relatively low thermal conductivity,
Speaker 1: so that could mean savings in terms of heating and
Speaker 1: cooling and you're finished buildings. Um. Also, since would, as
Speaker 1: you said earlier, Jonathan, is so much lighter than concrete,
Speaker 1: we would use wayless energy shipping it and putting up
Speaker 1: structures that that contain it. So we're talking about a
Speaker 1: smaller energy investment in WOULD than it would take for
Speaker 1: concrete or steel, both in the construction and in the
Speaker 1: transportation of construction materials. All right, sure, um, And as
Speaker 1: a bonus to communities here, c LT buildings are are
Speaker 1: typically pre fabricated structures, even if they are being individually designed.
Speaker 1: A lot of the construction occurs off site, so when
Speaker 1: they go up, they go up quieter and quicker than
Speaker 1: concrete based structures. So that's nice. I'm speaking as a
Speaker 1: human person who has apartments going up on either side
Speaker 1: of her house right now, Yeah, I would. I would
Speaker 1: love it if that would is less noisy every day
Speaker 1: at seven thirty in the morning. Right. So, let's let's
Speaker 1: look at some of the wooden structures that currently exists
Speaker 1: that are kind of like the models that we're working
Speaker 1: off of to think of these potential future projects, like
Speaker 1: skyscrapers made out of timber. Yeah, I was, I was
Speaker 1: looking into this and it's and it's pretty fascinating if
Speaker 1: you're an architecture nerd hopefully even if you're not so okay, So,
Speaker 1: buildings that have like a concrete base sometimes called a
Speaker 1: podium in the industry, which is like the first floor
Speaker 1: usually uh and then a few upper stories consisting of
Speaker 1: lightwood framing have been around for decades. This isn't a
Speaker 1: particularly new concept. But but taller buildings and some some
Speaker 1: made entirely of wood framing, but most honestly incorporating some
Speaker 1: steel or concrete elements have been have been sprouting up
Speaker 1: over the past like five or six years, um and
Speaker 1: and um Like. The more that I read into this,
Speaker 1: the more puns I came across, and I have not
Speaker 1: included all of them in this industry, also growding up.
Speaker 1: I also came across one where it decided to use
Speaker 1: all the fire puns. I thought, well, that's kind of tasteless. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really catching fire, like, um can we can? We not? Anyway,
Speaker 1: So most of these structures so far are apartment buildings.
Speaker 1: In Australia and in Europe, there's there's an eight story
Speaker 1: high rise in Finland, ten story Forte in Melbourne, and
Speaker 1: the Cube in London and the fourteen story Treat which
Speaker 1: means tree in in in Norway. UM. In North America,
Speaker 1: timber buildings are more rare, but there are a few
Speaker 1: projects that are in development. There's already a really lovely
Speaker 1: c LT structure in Canada. It's the University of British
Speaker 1: Columbia's Earth Sciences Building UM. But but Seattle has planned
Speaker 1: a twelve story mixed use project called Framework that's supposedly
Speaker 1: coming over the next couple of years thanks to a
Speaker 1: one point five million dollar grant from the US to
Speaker 1: Partment of Agriculture, which it won in a contest for
Speaker 1: tall wood building designs, and if it goes up, indeed,
Speaker 1: it will be America's first tall wood building that's cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta say really quickly though, that University of British
Speaker 1: Columbia Earth Sciences building that was one of the buildings
Speaker 1: that was actually shown in the video I was watching
Speaker 1: about the construction process, and the guy was actually talking
Speaker 1: about the free standing staircase that is inside that building,
Speaker 1: which is gorgeous. Yeah. You look at you and he says, like,
Speaker 1: this thing. This shows how strong this this material is
Speaker 1: because it's it's anchored to the walls of the building,
Speaker 1: but it itself is a very tall there are no
Speaker 1: beams under it, right, It's very impressive to look at
Speaker 1: the gorgeous design of this building. And I'm really impressed
Speaker 1: with some of the approaches that I've seen architects take
Speaker 1: using this material in mind, you know, thinking like, well,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be made out of this stuff, so let
Speaker 1: me take a slightly different approach than I would with
Speaker 1: a traditional building. Yeah. Yeah, and a lot of them,
Speaker 1: a lot of them are so gorgeous. So like, so, y'all,
Speaker 1: do do yourselves a favor. If you want to look
Speaker 1: at something pretty, go go google like CLT tall wood
Speaker 1: building or something like that, and and come up with
Speaker 1: all of these things but but but b Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's fascinating to me that a lot of the designs
Speaker 1: skew decidedly modern um, which is sort of like the
Speaker 1: opposite of what you'd expect from like a rustic wooden thing.
Speaker 1: But but but but turns out being so beautiful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it turned well. For one thing, the boards that they're producing,
Speaker 1: they're not going to be evocative of like the rough
Speaker 1: hewn log cabin. That's not what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: It's a very different world when you're talking about this
Speaker 1: industrial wood that's been through and and and an industrial process.
Speaker 1: They've been through a pneumatic press for goingness sakes, Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's not akin to that rustic approach. Uh, And
Speaker 1: yet you get that effect of a warm invironing environment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially has those I love those tones, like the color
Speaker 1: that you get with depending upon the types of wood
Speaker 1: you're using, that you get using this particular type of material.
Speaker 1: So so, there are a few other projects that are
Speaker 1: in the works that I wanted to mention, the aptly
Speaker 1: named Tall Wood Building at the University of British Columbia,
Speaker 1: which is set to be eighteen stories high and to
Speaker 1: provide student housing there's a nineteen story cultural center slash
Speaker 1: hotel going up in Sweden and a twenty story mixed
Speaker 1: use building going up in Vienna. So things are moving
Speaker 1: and shaken in the wood building industry. And and honestly,
Speaker 1: it's at this point not as much physics as much
Speaker 1: as regulation that is keeping this from being more widespread
Speaker 1: than it currently is because because building codes, as as
Speaker 1: we have mentioned about the fire thing, are really a
Speaker 1: huge hurdle to to wood framed wood framed structures. Um.
Speaker 1: But but but advances in the industry could and will hopefully
Speaker 1: lead to updates in both fire codes and building codes
Speaker 1: and getting some good, good pointy legal distinction among different
Speaker 1: types of wood materials and and different combinations of those
Speaker 1: materials with concrete and steel to allow us for increased
Speaker 1: opportunities to to incorporate wood into construction. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: like I like hearing that. I like the idea of
Speaker 1: being able to define these things so that we can
Speaker 1: remove the barriers there and and seemore develop in this.
Speaker 1: I love the notion of a timber um uh, you know, skyscraper.
Speaker 1: It's such it's such a counterintuitive idea to me. The
Speaker 1: only thing that I think would be stranger is if
Speaker 1: you built a structure out of bone. Yeah, how about
Speaker 1: we build some cities out of bones and shells? Yeah?
Speaker 1: When when you Joe mentioned the idea of using bone
Speaker 1: or or a bone like material to build structures out
Speaker 1: of the first thing I thought of was city of Bones.
Speaker 1: Sounds like it could totally be a novel in the
Speaker 1: Song of Ice and Fire series. I knew there was
Speaker 1: already there had to be a novel called City of Bone,
Speaker 1: and I looked it up. Yeah, there is one urban
Speaker 1: fantasy novel. I'm not quite sure what that means. I
Speaker 1: think it's like with tall buildings. And I read some
Speaker 1: Jim Butcher. Okay, Jim Butcher got that urban fantasy downpat
Speaker 1: definitely with wizards and cities. Yeah, okay, did they take
Speaker 1: the subway sometimes? Actually, magic doesn't interfere with electricity, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: Jim Butcher's wizards. Yeah, he makes he makes technology fail
Speaker 1: around them, computers, smartphones, like things that are that are
Speaker 1: necessary to the plot. His magic will interfere with those. Cool. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: So how about building some tall buildings in cities out
Speaker 1: of out of bone like structures? So here comes Cambridge. Again,
Speaker 1: there's a twenty June. Just recently, in fact reading this
Speaker 1: was what gave me the idea for this episode. There's
Speaker 1: a June Cambridge University research feature on the work of
Speaker 1: Dr Michelle Oyen of Cambridge's Engineering Department and OI in
Speaker 1: works with constructing biomemetic materials. We talked about biomemetics all
Speaker 1: the time on this podcast, trying to create technology that
Speaker 1: mimics things we find in nature. So a lot of
Speaker 1: times that might be nanomachines or or you know, robotics,
Speaker 1: but in this case it's talking about bioinspired materials that
Speaker 1: take after the materials that are used to make up
Speaker 1: tissues in the bodies of animals. Um and so the
Speaker 1: type of materials she's been looking into in her research
Speaker 1: have been things like artificial eggshell and artificial bone. So
Speaker 1: no surprise that these could be very useful in creating
Speaker 1: things like medical devices such as prosthetics and implants. But
Speaker 1: um what if these types of materials could also be
Speaker 1: the structural basis for our buildings. So here's why these
Speaker 1: are interesting. We already know what it's like to try
Speaker 1: to build a holding out of minerals. You know, you've
Speaker 1: got concrete, cement, you know, rock based materials that you
Speaker 1: can build a building out of. But the eggshell and
Speaker 1: bone are not just minerals. There. There are a mixture
Speaker 1: of minerals and proteins. Bones are about half and half,
Speaker 1: with the mineral component being high hydroxy appetite or hydroxyl appetite.
Speaker 1: It's a calcium based mineral and the protein component mainly
Speaker 1: being collagen. Eggshells are a little bit different. They're much
Speaker 1: higher mineral content, only about five percent protein. But these
Speaker 1: combinations of minerals and proteins make ideal structural materials. There's
Speaker 1: a reason your body uses them. Uh they're they're very adaptable,
Speaker 1: and they're very strong and very resilient. So the minerals
Speaker 1: give the material hardness, but the proteins give the material toughness.
Speaker 1: And these are actually different physical concepts. If you're not familiar,
Speaker 1: quick refresher. Hardness is how resistant a material is to
Speaker 1: permanent change in formation. So a material that's resistant to cutting, scratching,
Speaker 1: permanent bending, that's a hard material, a tough material. Toughness
Speaker 1: refers to how much energy material can absorb before it fractures.
Speaker 1: So an easy way to remember this is that toughness
Speaker 1: is the opposite of brittleness. Something that's brittle and breaks
Speaker 1: easily is not tough. Uh. So many materials are one
Speaker 1: or the other, Like a big piece of rubber might
Speaker 1: be tough but not hard. A piece of glass, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, hard but not tough, right exactly. But
Speaker 1: biomaterials like bones are both hard and tough, which would
Speaker 1: come in awful handy if you wanted to build a
Speaker 1: structure out of such material. You want something that has
Speaker 1: both of those qualities exactly. So how do you build
Speaker 1: a synthetic or artificial biomaterial based on the concept behind
Speaker 1: things like bone and eggshell? Well, essentially you come by
Speaker 1: in the mineral components you're using with with the sample
Speaker 1: of the protein collagen which you find all throughout animal bodies,
Speaker 1: and you know you can get for research purposes. And
Speaker 1: so a cool thing about these two different structures I've
Speaker 1: brought up bones and eggshells is that they have very
Speaker 1: different mineral and protein interacting structures. And because of these differences,
Speaker 1: oi And thinks that you might be able to create
Speaker 1: even stronger materials by weaving bone inspired templates and eggshell
Speaker 1: inspired templates together into the same layer of material. Interesting.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like, uh, you know, if you
Speaker 1: want to think of it, it's it's like taking a
Speaker 1: more granular approach to what I was chatting about with
Speaker 1: the c LT and that you're you're binding. You're binding
Speaker 1: slabs of wood together with a ninety degree change in
Speaker 1: the direction of the grain, and that in turn increases
Speaker 1: the strength of the overall piece. But in this case,
Speaker 1: you're talking about two totally different structures that you're kind
Speaker 1: of interlacing together to get the best of both. You
Speaker 1: put them together into a lattice type structure, and because
Speaker 1: they have different qualities, they sort of reinforce each other. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: so how how does this stuck up in terms of
Speaker 1: like greenness? Yeah, that that's the thing. So the problems
Speaker 1: with things like steel and concrete cement being the ingredient,
Speaker 1: and concrete, they take all this energy to produce and
Speaker 1: they're all these carbon emissions associated with the production. Apparently,
Speaker 1: this is much less energy intensive process for making these
Speaker 1: biommetic materials takes place in the lab at room temperature
Speaker 1: rather than hours of intense firing. But we need the
Speaker 1: biomaterials in order to make it happen. So do do
Speaker 1: you have enough collagen lying around. To build a skyscraper
Speaker 1: need slaughter exactly right now, The obvious way to get
Speaker 1: collagen is from animals. You need it for material synthesis,
Speaker 1: but from animal bodies we're back to blood bricks, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not ideal because I mean, for one thing, you
Speaker 1: would look at a building and then you would just
Speaker 1: naturally think how many how many pigs seals baby seals, uh,
Speaker 1: floors three through seventeen. That is why to make this
Speaker 1: a feasible construction material, we probably need to find a
Speaker 1: way to substitute a protein element that doesn't come from animals,
Speaker 1: like a synthetic protein, or maybe something that could be
Speaker 1: derived from algae or bacteria or some other farmabile organism
Speaker 1: doesn't have a nervous system to make you feel bad about.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, I mean, even you're talking
Speaker 1: about in the lab, it could be created under room
Speaker 1: temperature conditions, which is in fact that's that's a huge
Speaker 1: advantage on the energy side. The question also beyond where
Speaker 1: do you get the protein? Once you've answered that question satisfactorily,
Speaker 1: where you're presumably not slaughtering hundreds of animals or to
Speaker 1: get to the protein, you need The next question is
Speaker 1: can you scale that production to a point where it
Speaker 1: would be useful for a real construction project. I don't
Speaker 1: know what the answer is. Oien claimed in this piece
Speaker 1: that that it is scalable, interested in can be scaled
Speaker 1: up in the lab. But but obviously you know, we don't.
Speaker 1: We never really tried it, so we don't know. So
Speaker 1: not only are we going to have to address the
Speaker 1: idea of changing the types of materials we're using to build,
Speaker 1: we also need to rethink the way we're actually building
Speaker 1: stuff today. I mean, it does seem like there's some progress.
Speaker 1: I think you said you were seeing some things that
Speaker 1: there's some progress towards things like artificial collagen, right, but
Speaker 1: we may not be there yet. But yeah, the the
Speaker 1: whole culture of construction is going to have to change, right,
Speaker 1: because the same thing is true probably for using wood
Speaker 1: instead of concrete. I mean, people have a way of
Speaker 1: doing things they we use concrete, we use steal. So
Speaker 1: a wooden structure or brick structure, steel and glass structure,
Speaker 1: concrete structure, and a bio mimetic bone temple all have
Speaker 1: differences at the blueprint stage that you have to study
Speaker 1: and take into account. Sure, yeah. I mean it's it
Speaker 1: may seem like we're we're saying the obvious, but this
Speaker 1: is something that you do have to take. You have
Speaker 1: to keep in mind. It's not like it's not as
Speaker 1: easy as just saying, hey, this other material is better,
Speaker 1: let's go to that now and from now on everyone
Speaker 1: uses this. There's a lot of momentum and inertia that's
Speaker 1: built into the systems that we human beings have designed.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that's to our benefits. Sometimes it means that we
Speaker 1: feel like progress isn't happening because we're not changing as
Speaker 1: quickly as we would like. But it's just a it's
Speaker 1: a matter of fact. It's not something that you can
Speaker 1: snap your fingers and and everything changes from this point forward.
Speaker 1: An assembly line is really great at creating your your
Speaker 1: your standard coffee mug. But if suddenly you want to
Speaker 1: make a coffee mug out of bone, right, it's yeah,
Speaker 1: or a little bit of grinding to a halt. Right,
Speaker 1: You're like, like, well, we've decided now that the coffee
Speaker 1: mugs are all going to be made out of bio
Speaker 1: mimetic bone, and they're going to like skulls. It's going
Speaker 1: to require a little bit of retooling of our manufacturing process.
Speaker 1: Everyone who wants to drink out of a skull for
Speaker 1: the record, I would buy that. Like today, I have
Speaker 1: three coffee mugs that are sugar skull designed, so I
Speaker 1: also would have one of those. Uh So, out of curiosity,
Speaker 1: I looked up away in scientific papers just to see
Speaker 1: if there were any more specifics that that I could
Speaker 1: find about the details of her recent research. And a
Speaker 1: lot of the research she's been involved in uh in
Speaker 1: one way or another seemed focused on studying micro environments
Speaker 1: or scaffolds that can facilitate natural artificial lost teo genesis.
Speaker 1: And of course osteogenesis is the process of growing new
Speaker 1: bone cells. It's the process you would want to mimic
Speaker 1: if you're going to try to grow some synthetic bone
Speaker 1: in the lab. So there were several papers about using
Speaker 1: hydro gels to simulate the micro environment in which bone
Speaker 1: cells grow. One of the most cited was a paper
Speaker 1: from with Annabel L. Butcher and Giovannis off a do
Speaker 1: called nano fibrous hydrogel composite as mechanically robust tissue engineering scaffolds.
Speaker 1: What does all that mean? So when you're when you're
Speaker 1: doing tissue engineering in the lab, cells usually have to
Speaker 1: be grown on what's called a scaffold. It's a it's
Speaker 1: some type of material, often a polymer, that gives a
Speaker 1: shape and an environment in which the in vitro tissues
Speaker 1: can assume their function. So it's sort of like you
Speaker 1: need to have a muffin tin to bake your muffins in.
Speaker 1: If you just tried to pour your muffin batter onto
Speaker 1: the oven rack, you would not produce ideal muffin. No,
Speaker 1: probably a fire, but no. We we've talked about this
Speaker 1: in the idea of three D printing organs for example.
Speaker 1: That's that's scaffolding is absolutely necessary, not just for the
Speaker 1: cells to to have like something to glom onto, but
Speaker 1: in order for them to actually take on the function
Speaker 1: that you want them to do. Right and uh And
Speaker 1: in many cases, what you want is a scaffold that
Speaker 1: will that will hold a shape while the cells can
Speaker 1: grow around it to assume the morphology that you want,
Speaker 1: but also that will itself degrade or disappear in some
Speaker 1: way when the tissue needs to fill in that space.
Speaker 1: So it needs to be there long enough to tell
Speaker 1: the cells where to go and guide them into place,
Speaker 1: but then go away when they need to fill in
Speaker 1: all the missing gaps. Uh So, hydrogels might be a
Speaker 1: good solution here. Hydrogels are gelatinous semi solids. They have
Speaker 1: some of the properties of a liquid and some of
Speaker 1: the properties of a solid, and that they have a
Speaker 1: constant volume and hold their shape like a like a
Speaker 1: solid does. But they can also be disrupted by mechanical
Speaker 1: you know, activity like Jello is a good example of
Speaker 1: a hydrogel. When you when you read about a hydrogel,
Speaker 1: just think about something like the consistency of jello. And
Speaker 1: the paper concluded that hydrogels make great scaffolding for tissue engineering,
Speaker 1: but that they don't have great quote mechanical performance, which
Speaker 1: I'm just picturing. That's funny to them, I think, Jello,
Speaker 1: what what is its mechanical performance? Like, yeah, but you
Speaker 1: can improve the mechanical What they concluded is you can
Speaker 1: improve the mechanical performance of hydrogels by lacing them with
Speaker 1: a fibrous component or nanofibers. Uh So, Anyway, I think
Speaker 1: that's that's sort of the stage that a lot of
Speaker 1: the research in h in the present is at. There
Speaker 1: they're looking at creating these environments, uh to grow these
Speaker 1: materials in interesting but back to back to buildings made
Speaker 1: of bones. So if you imagine that we're we're getting
Speaker 1: some kind of biomamentic bone or eggshell or bone eggshell
Speaker 1: composite type material, and we're trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: to use this in in building. Some other advantages do
Speaker 1: naturally come to mind. One of them is that bone
Speaker 1: inspired buildings ultimately could provide not only environmentally sustainable materials
Speaker 1: that are both hard and tough, but think about other
Speaker 1: things bones do. One of them is that bones can heal.
Speaker 1: Bones on Star Trek healed crew members. Yes, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: We should build buildings out of data. We have wharves.
Speaker 1: Oh that's true. We must stop. No, a broken bone
Speaker 1: where I think about a broken bone properly set right
Speaker 1: can commend itself. Now, it's not like that automatically a
Speaker 1: synthetic bone material would necessarily be able to do this, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, unless you built osteo blasts into it. It's
Speaker 1: you're right, you'd have to set out to give it
Speaker 1: this capability. Um, and it would depend on how it
Speaker 1: was designed. But this is another goal you can strive for,
Speaker 1: and it seems quite achievable if your basis for your
Speaker 1: material is bone. So you imagine you could have like
Speaker 1: a bone damn. That's great, a bone. Damn fissures appear
Speaker 1: in the damn over time because of pressure, But then
Speaker 1: those tiny fractures could be healed up by a process
Speaker 1: akinned osteogenesis. You know. So this is like the song,
Speaker 1: you know, the song Damn bones, damn bones. I'm almost
Speaker 1: ashamed of myself. I want to thank the listener who
Speaker 1: sent in the book about puns. It's true. I actually
Speaker 1: have it at my desk. That would be sparkling blue.
Speaker 1: Thank you, sparkling Blue. Uh no, this I was really
Speaker 1: fascinated by this topic. It was one of those things
Speaker 1: where as soon as you heard the idea of cities
Speaker 1: made of wooden bone, it kind of is evocative of
Speaker 1: like fantasy novels. Sure, and I mean I'm picturing that
Speaker 1: any building made made of artificial bone would have to
Speaker 1: be designed based on like hr Geigers. Right, yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: I've heard both. Uh yeah, I've said Geiger before, so
Speaker 1: we've got it covered. I'm someone saying, no, it's it's
Speaker 1: g j like, oh shoot, it's like that gift Jeff thing. Um.
Speaker 1: Then we're in trouble. But I love this idea and
Speaker 1: I love that, you know, this was something that I
Speaker 1: got to to learn about today, Like this was not
Speaker 1: something where I kind of knew about it moving into
Speaker 1: this episode. It was all discovery for me, and I
Speaker 1: love that. I hope that you listeners out there experience
Speaker 1: something akin to that. And if you guys have suggestions
Speaker 1: for future episodes, maybe there's some other weird or awesome
Speaker 1: topic that is future oriented and you would like us
Speaker 1: to cover it, let us know. Send us an email.
Speaker 1: The address is FW thinking at how Stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can drop us a line on social media.
Speaker 1: We're on Twitter and Facebook. At Twitter we are FW thinking.
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Speaker 1: You can leave us a message there and we look
Speaker 1: forward to hearing from you and we'll talk to you
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