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Vienna’s 275 foot tall wooden building

Next year in Vienna, architects will start working on a 275-foot-tall building made almost entirely out of wood. Source: Popular Science

The Guardian reported that the approximately 25-story building will cost 60 million Euros ($67 million) and will save 2800 tons of carbon emissions compared to building a similar structure made of concrete.

Wooden skyscrapers are a fast-growing trend among eco-minded architects who point to the environmental benefits of building with wood.

Stockholm plans to build a 34-story wooden apartment building by 2023, and others are in the works from Europe to Australia.

Unlike concrete’s production process, which emits large quantities of carbon dioxide, trees take in carbon dioxide as they grow.

Their wood acts as a storage device for this carbon, with each cubic meter of wood storing about one ton of carbon dioxide every year. But in the glass-and-steel world we live in, the idea of wooden skyscrapers is a tough one to swallow at first.