« Decoding Timber Towers » Ideas Competition | The 4th edition seeks innovative wood product solutions for affordable housing
31 mars 2025 - 2 mai 2025
Excerpt of press release from Urabnarium :
« International competition addresses climate change and construction challenges, off ering $50,000 in prizes and global recognition
MARCH 31, 2025 (VANCOUVER, CANADA) — Urbanarium is thrilled to launch Decoding Timber Towers, a global ideas competition with real-world impact and the largest of its kind in Canada. This marks the Vancouver organization’s fourth installment in its aff ordable housing competition series, which addresses the impact of climate change on housing and off ers winners with international portfolio recognition and cash prizes totalling $50,000. Registration is open now through May 2, with early bird pricing through April 11 (extended to April 14).
This year’s competition asks participants to consider residential and mixed use design solutions that use mass timber — an engineered wood product that is sustainable and low-carbon, but considered an expensive alternative to concrete and steel as the forestry industry catches up to demand. In recent years, mass timber construction has grown in popularity around the world, from France to Sweden.
Urbanarium has always been a platform that fosters discourse around the urgent issues we face in housing, community building, and urban planning. As Canada faces US tariff s on steel, Decoding Timber Towers looks for innovative solutions with BC timber that will shape the future of low carbon construction, and stimulate the domestic construction market with design ideas that also maintain a high standard of comfort, livability and connection to land.
The competition asks participants to design creative solutions to some of the challenges facing mass timber construction today: unfamiliarity with the resource, steep upfront costs, the requirement for specialized consultants, insurance coverage, and the design issue of creating all-wood balconies that have a high potential for trapped moisture and rot. The benefi ts of mass timber construction are manifold: In addition to being a high-quality and environmentally friendly resource, it is well-suited for pre-fabrication, which means more effi cient construction.
Registrants will be assigned hypothetical sites based on a fi ctionalized Transit-Oriented Area (TOA), or an area within close proximity to rapid-transit such as SkyTrain stations and bus exchanges. Four individual sites have been distributed across the fi ctional TOA based on typical BC conditions, and have been formed with the input of First Nations and Indigenous housing developers in order to increase the applicability and repeatability of proposal ideas. »
Registration : Deadline Friday, May 2, 2025
Publié le 11 avril 2025