Special Issue on Timber in Fire

Abstract

Timber is amongst the oldest building materials used by humankind. We have been building with timber for millennia, and in its various forms timber has consistently remained a key structural and building material in most cultures (along with masonry and, more recently, concrete and steel). However, various conflagrations in largely timber-built towns and cities around the world throughout the history of civilization—typically called the ‘‘Great Fires’’ (e.g. of Rome, Constantinople, Hangzhou, Utrecht, Amsterdam, London, Baltimore, Tokyo, etc.)—led to the use of timber structural and cladding materials being reduced or explicitly restricted within dense conurbations, with a preference for non-combustible structural framing, cladding, and roofing materials—particularly for multistory and high-rise construction. In most places, timber has remained a critically important and widely used building material in a range of applications, however during recent centuries the structural use of timber (either as heavy timber elements or light timber framing) has typically been limited to low-rise construction of smaller volume buildings with fewer than four-to-five storeys; the use of timber cladding has also been widely restricted or avoided. However, spurred on by the sustainability and constructability credentials of timber as compared with concrete, masonry, or steel—and by the development of novel engineered timber materials and prefabricated systems incorporating engineered timber joists and trusses, glued-laminated timber (glulam) and cross-laminated timber (CLT)—timber has experienced an accelerating resurgence/emergence as a primary material in multi-storey buildings [1]. A range of publications during the past 5 years has highlighted the opportunities to build large, multi-storey buildings in engineered timber [2–4]. Timber buildings of up to nine or ten storeys are increasingly being proposed internationally, and numerous proposals have been made for predominantly timber—or hybrid timber-steel or timber-concrete—buildings of 30 storeys or more [2]. Timber is also increasingly being proposed by architects and engineers for innovative, sustainable, and attractive building facades and cladding systems.