Michael Green is the man behind the term mass timber, a concept he coined in his book The Case for Tall Wood Buildings, at a time when there was still no umbrella term. CLT, LVL (laminated veneer lumber) and LSL (laminated strand lumber) needed a family name, and he gave them one.
“There are now mass-timber conferences all over the world, and it's surreal that there's even a real word I came up with,” says Michael Green.
Thirteen years have passed since he gave his TED talk “Why we should build wooden skyscrapers”, the unofficial starting point for the international discussion about timber's potential as a high-rise building material. The talk has been translated into more than 30 languages and remains one of the most viewed in the fields of architecture and sustainability. That is no accident.
A story for everyone
Michael Green understood early on that being right is not enough: you must also be able to tell, explain and argue your case.
“The hard part of my job has never been proving that what I do and advocate holds up technically. The challenge lies in persuading the public and changing their perception of what is possible.”
Choosing tall timber buildings as the centrepiece of his narrative was a deliberate move. To spread the idea of timber as the obvious building material, he needed to capture people's imagination. The timber high-rise became the symbolic tool, not the goal. And vivid storytelling was the key.
The impact of the TED talk was tangible. It articulated for a broad audience how significant the climate impact of buildings really is – about 40 per cent of global emissions – at a time when the discussion focused almost exclusively on transport. It also offered a different narrative about forests and harvesting: that sustainable forestry with replanting is actually part of the solution, not part of the problem.
“When we harvest and replant responsibly, timber is the most renewable resource we have,” says Michael Green.
Now, more than a decade later, Green's focus is on the next step. His vision for the coming ten years is about articulating a new way for the industry to talk about costs. He calls it The True Cost Envelope.
“We tend to define the cost of a building very narrowly: materials and labour. What we don't do is account for what society pays for climate change, construction noise, slow build times, stress, mental-health issues and healthcare use. Society pays all the time – but we don't book it as a construction cost.”
Here Green sees artificial intelligence as a tool with real potential. If one can statistically prove that schools built in timber deliver better educational outcomes, lower stress levels and improved mental health among students, the playing field changes. Then no one will ever choose to build in any other material again.
Michael Green's hope is that the Nordic countries and Canada, with their robust health registries and long traditions of comparative research, can lead this work.
“I think we should apply for funding to prove we can reduce healthcare costs by building more in timber. These are things that have always been difficult to connect – but that's what the next decade should be about.”
Today much of the construction industry's debate is driven by emotion rather than data. Green cites the tragic Grenfell Tower fire in London in 2017 as an example, arguing that the wave of new regulations that followed was an emotional reaction, not a scientific one. The laws of physics work the same whether you're in Norway, Sweden, Finland or Canada – fire behaves identically. Yet every country, and sometimes every state or region, creates its own rules.
“It's absurd. You can't solve problems when you create the conditions for change in a system that's so bureaucratic.”
The fifth material
But Michael Green does not stop at mass timber. In his 2023 TED talk he introduced a concept that reaches even further: FIVE, the fifth building material. The premise is this: if steel, concrete, masonry and timber have built the world over the past two centuries, what happens if we start afresh and create a fifth? A material inspired by the inner structure of trees and plants. Fibre-based. Organic. Cultivable with the power of the sun.
The fifth material is not intended as a criticism of mass timber. Mass timber is the best we can do right now. But we will not be able to supply the whole world with it. Africa's and Asia's rapidly growing cities lack access to northern-European or Canadian forests. What they do have, however, is sunlight and land to cultivate. Green is clear that this is also about directing capital in the right direction. He refers, with a certain wistfulness, to how venture capital flows to the tech sector while building-material science is sidelined and large forest companies are often conservative in their approach to both investment and change.
An entirely new way of thinking also demands a new generation of leaders in the timber and forest industries. We need younger CEOs and forest owners with a drive to innovate and a willingness to take risks.
The future of timber construction will be decided largely in the lecture halls, and Michael Green has strong opinions about what is missing. It is not technical competence; it is leadership.
“We don't teach what it means to be a leader. You can't persuade clients, cities and contractors to do difficult or new things if you don't understand what it means to lead.”
Michael Green is convinced that whoever can lead, listen, draw out the best from a team and turn ideas into reality is the one who drives genuine change. His view is that because leadership is not taught in schools today, leaders are not being created.
He takes the construction industry as an example. It represents a significant share of many nations' entire economies. Yet there is a shortage of powerful voices speaking up for the industry, challenging it and pushing it forward, Michael Green argues.
“There are lobby groups, but there are no real leaders talking about what the industry needs to do better. It's crazy. Absolutely crazy.”
He also points out that craftsmanship itself has been lost in the education system. Those who design and those who build need to learn from each other. Over the past century these skills have drifted apart; now it's time to bring them together again.
“I have a big woodworking shop at home. Whenever I can, I'm in the shop all day – that's why I understand timber. How it moves, how it cracks, what happens when I put in a screw one way or another. Getting your hands dirty is essential to education.”
Back to the shared space
In November, Michael Green is speaking at the Seminar for Engineered Timber Construction at Chalmers in Gothenburg. He is looking forward to it – perhaps most of all because he will be there in person. After the pandemic he prefers physical meetings; they offer a better opportunity to read the audience and relate to them.
“It's only when we're in the same room that we can truly share ideas. We need international meetings with different perspectives that stimulate new thinking and challenge the obvious. Not just locally. Globally,” says Michael Green.
Glöden – a heart in the Arctic
Above the Arctic Circle in Gällivare lies one of Michael Green's construction projects. Here, Glöden – a multi-activity centre housing a library, gym, theatre halls, swimming pools, restaurant and bowling alleys – is taking shape.
It is a project he describes with passion. A small town with big dreams. A place where darkness prevails for a month every year, and where a shared, warm and well-lit indoor space in timber fills a function that is hard to overstate.
It is about giving everyone a place to be during winter. A truly shared environment – something people gather around.
The timber for Glöden is locally sourced. Martinsons, with deep roots in northern Sweden, supplies the material. It is a model Green believes in: outsiders with knowledge and vision meeting local partners who bring material and local embeddedness.
“It's a privilege to come in from outside on a project like this. But it also feels like home to me. I grew up in Arctic Canada. The landscape, Sámi culture, reindeer – none of it is unfamiliar,” says Michael Green.
More than a decade has passed since Michael Green's TED talk about tall timber buildings. A generation of architects and engineers has grown up treating mass timber as a given. The construction industry is building more in timber than it did ten years ago, in more locations worldwide and in ever more ambitious formats. The term mass timber appears in building codes, industry documents and university courses on several continents. This is, at least in part, Michael Green's doing. Yet he is still not satisfied.
“Over the past ten to fifteen years, together we've changed how buildings are constructed and how they look – but we've only just begun. There's a long, long, long way to go.”
A message that chimes with the theme of this issue. The foundations are laid, but the work continues.
Text: Anna Strömberg Photo: MGA, Michael Green Architecture, Daniel Sonntag (Glöden)
