Courtney Humphries, reporting for the Boston Globe:
On this scale, the construction industry is set up to work in concrete and steel, and doesn’t change course easily. Architects are unaccustomed to envisioning their designs in timber. They also face building codes shaped by wood’s long record as a flammable material. In that sense, its advocates are fighting history in their effort to bring it back.
The buildings they envision have been dubbed “plyscrapers.” Their halting arrival into the mainstream of architecture represents a test case for whether the goal of sustainability can motivate a reversal of both long-term construction norms and the laws that have grown around them. And in the long run, they also may offer the prospect of putting the look and feel of cities through a whole new transformation.