Wooden campus building is country’s latest ode to nature

A new six-story college campus building stands as Singapore’s latest ode to nature. Home to Nanyang Technological University’s (NTU) business school, the gently curved design features sunlit atriums, open-air study areas set against lush backdrops and elevators that descend into beds of tropical plants. Everything from handrails to benches, door frames to room dividers (and even an adjoining bus stop), were built using wood, writes Oscar Holland for CNN.

So, too, were the structural beams and columns. In fact, the building is made almost entirely from mass timber — a new generation of engineered wood, arranged in layers and bonded with strong adhesives, that is pushing the boundaries of architecture. Sprawling across 43,500 square meters (468,000 square feet), it is now Asia’s largest timber building, by floor area. The SGD125 million (US$93 million) project opened in May and its exposed timber frame is free from cladding or paint.

Around 40% of the world’s energy consumption is attributed to the construction and operation of buildings. But unlike concrete and steel, whose production is energy-intensive, trees absorb carbon dioxide throughout their lifetime. If a tree is then turned into mass timber, this embodied carbon is ‘locked in’, rather than being returned to the atmosphere. Studies suggest one cubic meter of wood can store about a ton of carbon dioxide.
Full report on CNN site