One of the biggest challenges for designing what will soon be the world’s tallest wood building wasn’t the engineering – it was cost. "One of the major challenges is the economic situation," said Austrian architect Christoph Dünser, referring to University of British Columbia’s (UBC) planned 18-storey student housing project.

"The easiest way to do it is to build up a honeycomb which involves a lot of wood and load-bearing construction, but you end up with a very high price because the wood is double as expensive as it is in Austria," he said.

Dünser, an architect for Herman Kaufmann, explained that this is due to the wood technology industry in Canada. Few producers of high tech wood products mean little competition and high prices. "Compared to Canada, the Austrian code is way more repressive," he explained. "But what we benefit from is that we have a long wood tradition that is still based locally, and can combine our tradition with the modern things … CLT (cross-laminated timber) in Europe is a very industrial product, it’s accurate, the humidity is very precise, and there is big competition as there are several players in the market." Dünser said there are only two producers of CLT for B.C. despite the province having massive resources of wood.

"At the moment the industry is changing, and I think instead of producing two-by-fours for the Americans, you start to make more technical products that gain you more income, and more local wealth – that’s the development we saw in our country," he said.

But it takes time. Dünser said he was involved in an Austrian CLT condo project in 2004 but found the market wasn’t yet competitive. But now it has become a much more cost-effective industrial process. Dünser noted the market was simply responding to demand.

"If the market is asking for something, they will deliver it," he said.

Dünser said that he and the project’s other designers found that a simpler design was the best solution to get the cost right.

It features a CLT floor slab with glulam columns and a steel connector. UBC’s 18-storey tall wood student residence is set to open in September 2017. It will house 404 students in 272 studios and 33 four-bedroom units, and feature study and social gathering spaces.

There will also be a ground-floor lounge and study space for commuter students.

In addition to its primary function as a student residence, the building will serve as an academic site for students and researchers, who will be able to study and monitor its operations. The tall wood building will consist of a mass timber superstructure atop a concrete base. UBC aims for the building to achieve a minimum LEED Gold certification.

UBC’s Student Housing and Hospitality Services, the Binational Softwood Lumber Council, Forestry Innovation Investment, Natural Resources Canada and B.C.’s Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations are contributing funding for the building.

Any additional costs related to design and construction have been funded through external sources.

Students will pay the same for rent at the tall wood building compared to similar accommodations at other student residences on campus. The project’s architect, Vancouver’s Acton Ostry Architects, is working in collaboration with tall wood advisor Architekten Hermann Kaufmann from Austria. Fast + Epp, another local firm, is the structural engineer.

Other wood structure buildings on UBC’s Vancouver campus include the new AMS Student Nest and Engineering Student Centre, the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability, the Bioenergy Research and Demonstration Facility, and the Earth Sciences Building.

Last year, the B.C. government passed the Provincial Building Act, which enables innovation in building construction, including the use of wood.

The Building Act enabled the province to develop a regulation to allow construction of UBC’s new tall wood student residence, with rigorous health and safety standards applied to the project.

The regulation was developed in co-operation with the project design team, UBC’s chief building official and an independent building code consultant.