Tuesday October 17, 2023 | VICTORIA, BC
by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
The world’s leading players in mid- and high-rise timber construction will gather in Vancouver from September 22 to 26, 2025, for the fifth Woodrise International Congress.
This comes as the province grapples with a significant housing supply challenge. Mass timber and pre-fab units can also be used to boost construction of schools. Both housing and school spaces are struggling to keep up under the pressures of surging population growth.
Premier weighs in:
“I am proud that Vancouver will host Woodrise 2025. B.C.’s entrepreneurs and construction industry professionals are excited to showcase their work and our local talent,” said Premier David Eby. “Our province is a leader in wood and mass-timber construction. This is a perfect match between event and location.”
“We’ll be welcoming the world for Woodrise, a large international conference focusing on mid-rise and high-rise wooden buildings, coming to Vancouver in 2025. In order to meet our housing needs we’re going to have to innovate how we build, mass timber is one of those ways!,” said Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon in social media today.
Jobs, Economic Development and Innovation Minister Brenda Bailey said she is keen to welcome “the best & brightest minds in sustainable building and forestry to Vancouver to showcase BC’s incredible strides to become a global leader in Mass Timber and innovation”. She adds that BC’s building blueprint is based on mass timber.
“It’s a stronger, faster and more sustainable solution to meet BC’s housing and infrastructure demands,” says Bailey.
Mass Timber Action Plan:
BC’s stance is that through the Mass Timber Action Plan that First Nations, industry and government are becoming world leaders in wood construction. “Mass timber is a strong, clean building technology that is at the centre of our province’s future construction blueprint,” said Bailey.
Woodrise started in 2017:
Since the inaugural conference in 2017, Woodrise has become a success story of international collaboration, innovation and education. The event brings diverse stakeholders together around a shared goal of low-carbon construction and sustainable cities.
BC leads with mass timber:
Per capita, BC has 11 times more mass-timber buildings than the rest of North America, as stated in a news release today. BC is noted as a leader in wood and mass-timber construction.
In addition, Vancouver is a centre for North America’s leading timber design and engineering professionals.
About mass timber:
Mass timber products are solid, structural load-bearing components such as columns, beams, and panels. They are typically manufactured off-site in factories by fastening multiple layers of wood together with glue, dowels or nails, and are engineered for high strength. They have similar fire and seismic performance as concrete and steel, but are significantly lighter in weight and outperform traditional light-frame wood (2×6) construction.
Examples of mass timber products include:
- Cross-laminated timber
- Nail-laminated timber
- Glue-laminated timber
Mass timber can be used in many types of construction including residential, commercial and industrial buildings.
Prefabricated building components can be brought to job sites just in time for installation, reducing overall construction time, noise, and disruption. Mass timber is often combined with concrete and steel in “‘hybrid’” buildings to make use of the strengths of each material.
Woodrise organizing committee:
FPInnovations is part of the international Woodrise organizing committee, along with FCBA, a technological institute dedicated to promoting the forest and wood products sector in France, and the Japan International Association for the Industry of Building and Housing. As the Canadian organizer of Woodrise, FPInnovations is a private non-profit organization specializing in the creation of solutions that support the global competitiveness of the Canadian forest sector.
FPInnovations’ team of researchers has brought major contributions to the deployment of wood construction in Canada and elsewhere, with the production of numerous guides and reference tools that have helped evolve building standards in Canada and around the world in recent years. These research results showcase the great contribution of wood construction to Canada’s goal toward net-zero emissions by 2050. FPInnovations has research and development laboratories in Quebec City, Montreal and Vancouver, and technology-transfer offices across Canada.
“Canada has a rich portfolio of projects in the field of mid- and high-rise timber construction,” said Stéphane Renou, CEO, FPInnovations. “The construction of the Brock Commons Tallwood House building, an innovative 18-storey hybrid building, which was the tallest mass-timber building in the world, was the just the beginning of innovative leadership for B.C. in the mass-timber industry.”
===== GOVERNMENT LINKS:
- Woodrise Vancouver 2025: https://www.destinationvancouver.com/woodrise-2025/ | can01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com
- FPInnovations and Woodrise: https://web.fpinnovations.ca/woodrise2025
- Mass Timber Action Plan: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/business/construction-industry/bc_masstimber_action_plan_2022.pdf
- B.C.’s mass-timber sector
- Mass Timber Demonstration Program and the MTDP projects
- StrongerBC Economic Plan