Structural elements with transparent wood in architecture

Abstract

Transparent wood is a relatively new material. For the first time, it was created in 1992 by a German researcher Siegfried Fink. Back then he turned wood transparent to reveal its specific cavities for analytical purpose. But it was not until between 2015 and 2016 when Professor Lars Berglund from Swedish KTH University and Professor Liangbing Hu from University of Maryland developed a method to remove colour and some chemicals from small wood samples and added polymers to make it transparent. The material then has the higher strength than original wood while having a 90% transparency. In the future it can be used as an ecological building material which is significantly more biodegradable than plastic or glass. In the present article, examples of the possible use of transparent wood in the construction of structural elements in architecture are given. Examples of beam type load bearing elements and structural parts of the wall structures with use of transparent wood are presented.