While the world is advancing with taller structures using engineered wood, little importance is being given to natural wood, which is abundantly available in most regions of the world. The lack of technological research using this material in its natural state has caused a drawback in its usage. Also, the dependence on engineered wood for modern construction has only increased the transportation of such materials from the developed regions or ‘technologically advanced’ regions of the world to the developing areas, increasing the carbon footprint.
The grassroot idea of this research was to develop a construction technology for a multi-storey building using the locally available natural timber that satisfies the contemporary needs of the housing shortage in the urban context and encode the design logic of this research in a digital tool for ease of use by the local designers. The urban city of Shillong, located in the north-east state of Meghalaya in India, was selected as the context for this research. The region has a history of construction with natural timber, however in contemporary scenario the construction is common with concrete and steel, which poses a question on sustainability. The region also provides a challenge with respect to the seismic hazard as it is located in the Himalayan seismic belt. Given these constraints, along with the availability of local resources like– money, labor, space and technical data, the boundary conditions for this research were formulated. Inferences were drawn from the literature research for understanding timber as a building material, architectural principles of seismic design and case studies of Traditional Japanese timber construction and contemporary innovations in tall timber structures which played a vital role in development of the design.
This research focuses on the structural possibilities of constructing a six-storey building using naturally available timber. Given the academic time-frame, the column-primary beam joinery was developed, while others were conceptualized based on the inferences drawn from its design process. The global structural system was validated using the finite element analysis under the provisions of the National Building Codes of India. Being first of its kind in the context, this research successfully proves the structural possibilities of the proposed multi-storey natural timber structure. Also, a digital tool was created, which encodes the logic of the whole design process, which could be used by the local designers of the region to visualize the structural system at an early design phase. This would ease the usage of this technology in the region.
This research transcends beyond the current innovations in the field of timber construction. On using natural timber for construction, a complete manufacturing line of the engineered wood is eliminated, thus, reducing the environmental impact. It should be mentioned that the structural strengths of the natural timber cannot be matched to that of engineered timber or steel. However, the global concerns of environmental impact have forced us to rethink the way we are building today; ideate and share innovation in order to take a step forward to a sustainable future.