Timber iQ October - November 2017 // Issue: 34 | Page 46

FEATURES
Trees absorb and store carbon as they turn carbon dioxide into oxygen.
Timber as a sustainable
building material
Timber IQ puts to rest the many misconceptions in the marketplace about
sustainability when it comes to using timber as a construction material.
By Tristan Wiggill
“When you look at timber sustainability, it is completely
off the charts. It's not even a matter of comparing wood to
other materials; it is in a league of its own.” This is
according to Jacques Cronje, architect at Timber Design.
TALL STOREY
“Architect Michael Green in the US has designed a
12-storey building using a certain type of spruce timber,”
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relays Cronje. “He looked at how much spruce timber there
was in California and Canada and worked out that to
regrow that volume of timber would take 15 minutes, if
you looked at the entire plantations of that type of tree.
“There is absolutely no other building material that
comes even close to that. Seed to Seat, (a project initiated
by the American Hardwood Export Council in Australia,
New Zealand, UAE and South Africa, which asked 19