Nineteen storeys, sixty-five metres, Hamburg's tallest timber building. In Switzerland an eighty-metre residential tower is planned. This NZZ Format documentary, directed by Andrea Hauner and Nicole Krättli, asks what timber can actually do for the climate, and gives the objections room as well. Stefan Zöllig, then president of Timber Finance, shows a house built without heating and without a basement.
What the film shows
The documentary follows two threads. One leads to the building sites: how far timber can carry, where the limits are, and what it takes in engineering to raise a high-rise from a material that until recently was reserved for houses. The other leads into the laboratories, where teams at Cambridge and ETH Zurich are working on making engineered timber more durable. Marc Palahi of the European Forest Institute places the question in the context of the forest itself.
The question it leaves open
The film closes on the idea that buildings could become carbon stores, on one condition: the forest has to be managed sustainably. What it does not answer is what comes next. How much carbon does a specific building hold, who confirms the figure, and what is it worth. That is where our work begins. Timber Carbon quantifies the carbon locked into the load-bearing structure, has the removal verified under internationally recognised standards, and issues Timber Carbon Credits for it.
Topics
