Why Wood Is the Future of Skyscrapers in a Warming World

Picture yourself in a windswept forest. Leaves rustle and trunks creak as trees sway in the wind. This movement isn’t a sign of weakness—it’s an ancient adaptation. If pines, firs, and other trees were rigid, a gust would snap them. Instead, they flex, surviving storms through millennia of evolution.

Now, imagine standing on the top floor of a skyscraper during the same windstorm. The tower sways slightly, mimicking the resilience of a tree. This isn’t coincidence. In the early 20th century, as buildings reached unprecedented heights, architects abandoned wood in favor of steel to create structures that could flex in hurricane-force winds and withstand earthquakes. But today, as the planet warms and wildfires grow more destructive, designers are revisiting wood—not just for inspiration, but as a primary building material.

Engineered wood products like cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glue-laminated timber (glulam) are transforming construction. These materials consist of layers of wood glued together to form beams that are strong, lightweight, and flexible. Their strength is remarkable: buildings constructed with mass timber now reach 15, 20, even 25 stories. In 2022, the Ascent MKE Building in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, became the world’s tallest timber structure at 284 feet tall.

The push for taller timber buildings is driven by climate urgency. Trees absorb planet-warming carbon as they grow, locking it into the structure permanently. This makes mass timber a carbon-negative building material. In line with this goal, crews recently completed The Hive, a 10-story building in Vancouver, now North America’s tallest brace-framed, seismic-force-resisting timber structure. “I think we’re going back to how we used to build, which was with more wood,” says Lindsay Duthie, an architect at Dialog, the firm behind the project.

For thousands of years, humans relied on natural materials like wood, adobe, and granite. The industrial revolution introduced steel, a game-changer for construction—but at a steep environmental cost. Steel production emits vast amounts of carbon. Mass timber, by contrast, offers a sustainable alternative without sacrificing safety or scale. Because it’s engineered, it can be made from small- and medium-sized trees, not just old-growth giants. Beams are created by slicing, layering, and gluing wood pieces together, reducing the need to harvest massive single trunks.

This approach also supports forest health. Agencies like the US Forest Service thin overcrowded forests to prevent catastrophic wildfires—a problem exacerbated by a century of fire suppression. Historically, natural fires cleared out excess vegetation, creating space for new growth and attracting grazing animals like deer, which boosted biodiversity. Today, selective harvesting for mass timber helps restore this balance, reducing fire risks while producing a high-performance building material.