Winds briefly stop Forte's jumbo ply timber construction

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Despite sunny conditions in Docklands, high winds again temporarily put a halt on construction work on Lend Lease’s timber high-rise development Forte.

Workers took refuge in a makeshift wind shelter but there’s no ignoring their hard work over the last few weeks.

In week eight of construction the building has hit new heights, with work starting on the seventh floor.

The building, set to be the tallest timber residential tower in the world, uses technology developed in Europe.

The building is made from cross-laminated timber, an engineered wood product fabricated by bonding together timber boards, alternating the grain direction of each layer. The criss-cross pattern works to produce a solid wooden panel.

A project director for British company Eurban which supplies CLT services, Philipp Zumbrunnen spoke at a Lend Lease seminar recently.

''It's a sort of jumbo ply. The glued, crossed pattern is very stable,'' Zumbrunnen says.

''CLT is less a wood product, more a building system.''

He says unlike glued laminated timber where several layers of timber are glued together in one direction, CLT does not warp as much.

Forte will reach 10-storeys but Zumbrunnen says there’s no reason the system can’t be used on buildings of 10-20 storeys.

He says his company undertook a feasibility study for a 19-storey tower in London but the developer pulled out.

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To view the building's progress from previous weeks click here.