China is turning to concrete-and-mass timber construction systems to build the next generation of buildings and is tapping into Canadian know-how to build a new hospital near the historic centre of Nanjing.
That is according to the Canadian Wood Group, a federally funded agency chartered to grow markets for Canadian wood products, which is now working with the China Academy of Building Research to promote “high-quality, sustainable wooden construction materials in China.”
Known as “The Jiangsu Provincial Rehabilitation Hospital”, the new hospital’s “wood-concrete composite structure” combines a concrete floor podium with glulam beams and columns, all certified under a Glulam certification programme established between the Canadian Wood Group’s Chinese office and the China Academy of Building Research.
It comes as China increasingly seeks to reduce its dependency on concrete, which is causing large swathes of its population to sink under the weight of its own concrete. Last month, Wood Central reported that Michael Barnard, a global futurist, predicted that China’s reduced dependence on cement could lead to an uptake in mass timber, geopolymers, epoxies, and improved material software.
“With the rise in the cost of cement and the demand reduction, the alternatives spring into action,” Mr Barnard said, “in my assessment, the largest of these is likely to be engineered timber,” adding that “structural strength is equal to reinforced concrete with a fifth the mass. Every ton of engineered timber displaces 4.8 tons of reinforced concrete, hence the roughly 0.5 tons of cement required for the concrete.”
Already, Canadian Wood Group’s Chinese office is working with the China Academy of Building Research to beef up the certification of the country’s booming glulam industry.
“As a major structural component in wood buildings and mass timber structures, Glulam is becoming more popular in hybrid structures as it is a visual application of wood construction,” according to the Canadian Wood Group. However, “the Glulam industry faces capacity challenges and production quality issues due to a fragmented market that lacks recognised quality oversight systems.”
There are more than 20 Glulam producers in China, “but most of them are small-scale manufacturers with inconsistent performance.” As a result, the quality of local Glulam production has, in effect, limited the growth of Chinese timber construction, missing out on the opportunity to use it to meet the needs of its booming hospital and healthcare industry, a spend that the US government projects to have ballooned out to US $75b over the 2020-2025 period alone.
“Because of this challenge, Canada Wood China started a program with the Chinese Academy of Building Research (CABR) to identify the strongest Glulam manufacturers and develop a recognised training and certification program for quality control,” it said.
Xu Fang, Director of American Softwoods’ China Office Softwood Export Council, will present at TimberConstruct
As glulam capacity improves, the world’s most important forest economy is now a global engine room for softwood—connected to 30% of the world’s trade in forest products through its Belt and Road Initiative.
“China is experiencing a Timber revolution thanks to a rapid rise in the construction of timber buildings,” according to Andrew Dunn, the TimberConstruct organiser, who said that “as demand for housing and infrastructure skyrocketed, domestic timber production and imports have surged to meet the need for wood-based.”
“That’s why we are thrilled to have Xu Fang join us to discuss how China’s rapid rise as a timber economy,” Mr Dunn said, adding that “large-scale timber plantations and wood processing industries were established to supply the booming timber-building sector, transforming China into a global powerhouse for timber construction.”
Ms Fang will join Nick Milestone (from Mercer USA) and Yuichi Shinohara, from Shinohara Shoten Co Ltd (from Japan), to discuss Australasia and the Pacific Visionary Timber Projects.
Mr Dunn said TimberConstruct, Australia’s largest timber construction conference and exhibition, will be held in Melbourne on August 12th and 13th, 2024, and “is focused on materials and design, prefabrication, and building techniques.”
