Grant: Alliance Grants

Now that mass timber has been formally included in Canadian building codes as acceptable solutions, in coming years demand for lumber for tall wood buildings will outstrip existing industry supply capacity. This project aims to address this by creating a new generation of engineered light frame and mass timber products that supplement and extend the use of current and lesser-used local wood supplies such as Aspen and Western Hemlock with much faster growing, stronger and tougher bamboo timber. Bamboo has a 3 to 5 year harvest cycle compared with 50 to 80 years for forest trees and forms a unique class of materials with greater toughness, tensile, and flexural strength and ductility than wood, making it an extremely versatile architectural and structural building material. Challenges to overcome include difficulties bonding bamboo with existing structural wood adhesives, and ensuring wood-bamboo hybrid building products will conform to existing structural performance and stringent fire design codes for mass timber. Bamboo's higher density gives it greater thermal conductivity but also a slower charring rate which will influence the design and fabrication of hybrid building members. We are working with scientists, suppliers, developers, architectures, and structural engineers specialized in wood and bamboo buildings to develop prototype products, manufacture them locally in BC, creating employment opportunities, and use the new products in building demonstration projects that will allow for public awareness and promotion, and ongoing monitoring of functionality such as materials durability and thermal efficiency. The project will help promote market awareness and demand to drive domestic (i.e. North American) bamboo timber cultivation, greater utilization of lesser-used local woods, and help solidify Canada's position as a world leader in transitioning away from carbon-intensive concrete and steel construction to innovative low-carbon timber-based construction.