Using Timber in Mid-Rise and Tall Buildings to Construct Our Cities: A Science Mapping Study

Abstract

The increase in population and urban migration has incentivized the construction of mid-rise and tall buildings. Despite the incremental rise in vertical construction, there are still investigation gaps related to high-rise buildings, such as carbon emissions and the use of low-carbon materials in tall structures. Timber presents a potential sustainable solution for mid-rise and tall buildings. The history of topics in timber building investigations began with the material characterization of innovation in construction technologies such as cross-laminated timber (CLT) and practical topics like construction collaboration, sustainability, engineering, and construction science. To identify potential topics and understand the research history of mid- and high-rise timber buildings, a bibliometric analysis is proposed. Therefore, this article aims to perform a bibliometric analysis with a science mapping technique to categorize and analyze the evolution of mid- and high-rise timber building research topics and identify the most relevant trends and current challenges. A co-occurrence keyword analysis was performed with the software SciMAT to analyze the evolution and actual trends of mid-rise and tall timber buildings. The results show an evolution in the investigation topics from timber frame elements to mass timber and CLT for high-rise buildings, which was expected due to the higher structural capacity of the mass timber product. Surprisingly, sustainability topics such as carbon emission and life-cycle analysis (LCA) were transversal in all periods with concrete as a recurrent keyword in the analysis. More specialized topics such as robustness, disproportioned collapse, perceptions, and attitude were observed in the final periods. Research projections indicate that for mid-rise and tall timber buildings, the environmental potential has to be aligned with the structural feasibility and perception of the construction’s actors and society to improve the carbon emissions reduction and support the increment of the population in an urban context.