UnfoldBack

Home > Architecture > Mass Timber in Canada Why Canada Is Building 18-Storey Towers With Wood How mass timber is moving Canadian construction from conventional lumber to prefabricated structural systems capable of reaching high-rise scale. Canada has been building with wood for generations. That part is not surprising. What is surprising is what happened when engineers stopped treating wood as a material mainly for houses. In Vancouver, an 18-storey student residence rose to 54 metres using a hybrid structural system built largely around engineered timber. In British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec, building-code pathways have expanded to allow certain encapsulated mass-timber buildings to reach as high as 18 storeys. And in 2026, another 18-storey mass-timber project is under construction in North Vancouver. The question is no longer: Can Canada build tall with wood? It already has. The more important question is: How did ordinary lumber becom...

Home > Architecture > House Construction Why Houses Are Built Differently in the US, Canada, UK and Australia How climate, materials, codes and construction traditions create dramatically different homes across four closely connected countries. Imagine taking the exact same house plan and sending it to four construction sites. One outside Dallas. One near Toronto. One outside Manchester. And one in Melbourne. The floor plan could remain almost identical. But once construction begins, the houses would start separating from one another. One may rise quickly from lightweight timber studs. Another may use a similar wooden skeleton but wrap it in a much more demanding thermal envelope. A third may depend heavily on brick and block cavity walls. The fourth may appear to be a solid brick house even though the bricks are only an outer skin around timber or steel framing. None of these systems developed by accident. A house is partly an architectural obje...

Home > Architecture > Reinforced Concrete The Rise of Reinforced Concrete: How Steel and Concrete Reshaped Architecture How two materials with opposite strengths created the structural system behind modern buildings, bridges, infrastructure, and some of architecture's most ambitious forms. Quick Summary Concrete is naturally strong in compression but relatively weak in tension. Steel reinforcement compensates for that weakness and helps concrete resist bending and tensile forces. Joseph Monier patented an influential reinforced-concrete technique in 1867. François Hennebique helped develop reinforced concrete into an integrated structural building system. Reinforced concrete allowed columns, beams, slabs, shells, cantilevers, and large structural frames to become increasingly practical. Modernist architects embraced concrete for both structural freedom and architectural expression. The material later became closely associated with Brutalism and monument...

When Walls Stopped Holding Buildings Up: Curtain Walls Explained How architecture separated structure from skin, turning heavy load-bearing walls into lightweight façades engineered to control glass, wind, rain, heat, air and light. For most of architectural history, the exterior wall had an enormous responsibility. It did not simply separate indoors from outdoors. It often helped hold the building up . Stone, brick, and masonry walls carried loads from floors and roofs toward the foundations. Then architecture separated two jobs that had been tied together for centuries. The structural frame began carrying the building. The exterior wall became free to do something else. That separation eventually produced one of the defining elements of modern architecture: the curtain wall . A curtain wall does not eliminate the wall. It changes its job. KEY TAKEAWAYS Traditional masonry buildings frequently relied on exterior walls to carry structural loads. Steel and r...

How Prefabrication Changed Architecture: From Kit Homes to Modular Buildings How buildings moved from entirely site-built construction toward kit homes, factory-made components, modular rooms, and digital fabrication. For most of architectural history, a building was assembled almost entirely where it would eventually stand. Materials arrived at the site. Craftspeople measured, cut, fitted, adjusted, and built around weather, terrain, and whatever conditions existed that day. Prefabrication introduced a different idea: what if significant parts of a building could be manufactured first and assembled later? That shift changed the relationship between architecture and production. Walls could become components. Rooms could become modules. Construction could begin in a factory while foundations were still being prepared on site. From mail-order kit houses to apartment modules lifted into position by cranes, prefabrication has repeatedly challenged the assumption that every b...