Hybrid design of 18-story "Tall Wood Building" in Vancouver and alternative in wood

The first part of this paper discusses the design of one of the world's tallest hybrid wood buildings: the "Tall Wood Building", a 18-story, 53 m tall student residence on the campus of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. The building consists of 17 floors in solid wood construction on one floor in reinforced concrete. Two vertical concrete cores provide the required lateral load resisting system. The timber construction system consists of cross laminated timber, point supported on glulam beams. While the construction of the concrete cores lasted 14 weeks, the entire solid wood structure took only ten weeks to complete. Substantial shortening of the project duration and reduction of the ecological footprint of the building could have been achieved, if wood had been used for the cores. In the second part of this work, we examine the possibility of designing the building with solid wood cores. The results of a validated numerical model show that the criteria for earthquake and wind design of the current Canadian building standards can be met.