Called the Ascent, this wooden tower is in the USA. Check out the images.
Baptized as Ascent, this solid wood tower is in the USA, it is 86.6 meters high and it took two years to build. Until now, two Scandinavian countries housed the two tallest wooden buildings in the world. The Mjösa Tower , with its 85.4 meters in Norway and the Sara Kulturhus Center , with its 75 meters in Sweden, have recently occupied the top positions. But the fault that these have come to occupy second and third place, we find it in a new building built in Milwaukee (USA), as certified by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) .
Ascent, as it has been given its name, is an 86.6 meter tall solid wood tower designed by Korb + Associates Architects . The inauguration was held in July 2022, two years after the construction process began. During this time, they worked on research, testing, planning, and collaborating with external stakeholders to achieve this. The process brought together experts from around the world and has established a blueprint for tall timber that can help pave the way for future projects .
With its 25 floors, among other features, it has a concrete base, lift shafts and stairs. The rest of the structure is made of plywood (CLT) and glulam. The architecture firm's design for the tower was based on biophilic design.
Located in the center of the largest city in the state of Wisconsin, Ascent has a six-story podium at its base that houses retail and service spaces, as well as parking and a lobby. The 19 floors above house apartments and culminate in a top floor with floor-to-ceiling glass windows and two terraces. The building's cladding is "almost exclusively" glass.
According to Korb, in addition to providing "superior aesthetics," the wood in Ascent captures enough CO2 to be the equivalent of taking more than two thousand cars off the road for a year . Along with this, it is estimated that with the choice of materials, it also saved "three to four months of construction time".
According to the CTBUH website, “it is estimated that the use of mass wood for the structural system reduced construction time by approximately 25% , compared to a conventionally constructed concrete building of the same scale. Ascent was built using a “digital twin” model, so every beam, column and panel could arrive on site ready to assemble, with holes pre-drilled to within 1.5 millimeters.”
Despite being a very recent milestone, everything seems to indicate that this well-deserved first place will not last long. The same architect who designed Ascent, Jason Korb, is already working on a new twenty-nine-story solid wood building in St. Louis that would be about thirty feet taller. In addition, from the CTBUH it was assured that there are many others that are projected or already under construction and that will exceed the height of Ascent.
