User talk:Md20082030

Wooden Buildings Wood is good building material In China most of the buildings are built by reinforced concrete. When I got to the US that’s the first time I saw so many apartments, and houses are built by wood. I‘s amazing because in my opinion wood is weak, and unstable. So I don’t think that wood could be a good building material. I have read several articles from the book and the website relating to the wooden buildings. After I have done these researches, I changed my mind, and I don’t think that wood couldn’t be a good building material any more. I have learned that the wooden buildings have a lot of advantages. Common in the US About 90% of buildings in America are made by wood. There are two reasons for the wooden buildings are popular in the US; the first one is since there are a lot of forests here wood price is cheap, and wooden construction use less building time and need less manpower. “Environmental aspects are important, the fact that wood is a renewable and natural material is probably one of the reasons why people are so positive about their homes”. In other words, people like to use something that is natural and they think this kind of material is better for their health. Not only people care their own health, but also environment need someone to care about. Currently, the biggest environmental problem is climate change; Climate change From the ice age until now climate change become the biggest problem all around the world. Some people may say that climate change won’t hurt this generation so we don’t need to care about it. It’s wrong because whatever people did to our living environment it will hurt back. It will hurt people in several ways such like typhoon, tsunami, aridity, and flood. For these disasters the building construction should be stable. When we talk about how to make the building construction more stable to defend the climate change, we can also talk about what kind of building materials we could use to mitigate climate change. There are several factors that caused the climate change, but the most important source is pollution. Wood VS concrete and brick Using wood to build the buildings can mitigate the climate change. To compare the life cycle and the production of wood with concrete materials. We can see that “the wooden buildings use less energy and emit less carbon than the reinforced concrete buildings.” There are a lot of kinds building materials are using all over the world, and the most famous building materials are wood, reinforced concrete, and brick. Back in China, before 1970s the most popular type of building was the brick building; there were only a few numbers of wooden buildings and reinforced concrete buildings. The reason why China had a lot of brick buildings was the cost of brick in China was very cheap. Americans would not understand why the cost of brick in China was so cheap. There were two main reasons: first, there are a lot of soils which is suited for can made bricks; second, the labor cost is inexpensive. China doesn’t have a lot of forests like America and Canada so that the woods in China are very expensive. Building garbage “Building garbage.” It means when people destroy the buildings if the buildings are made by brick, the debris from these brick buildings cannot be recycled and is considered as the building garbage. As a result, people need to find a place to bury these kinds of building garbage. Unlike the brick buildings, when people demolish the wooden buildings, they can just leave the pieces of wood they take out on the ground and the wood will be decomposed and turned to be soil. Green Buildings The Green buildings are the popular topic when people talk about the building construction. In November 7, 2007 former President Bill Clinton talked about the green buildings at Greenbuild conference. This meeting point out that “Fighting climate change requires making the nation's homes, offices, and schools healthier and more energy efficient.” Clinton said that “The sale's been made Otherwise Al Gore wouldn't have gotten the Nobel Prize. Now what we have to do is...to prove that this is not a big bottle of castor oil that we're being asked to drink." At the end of that meeting President Clinton launched the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) in to do something such like build green buildings to mitigate climate change in practical, measurable and significant ways. From this meeting we could see how important the green buildings are for the climate change. Wooden buildings in earthquakes During the earthquakes in Turkey, most of the concrete buildings were fall down but the wooden buildings didn’t. There are three reasons; first one is the cracking and falling of plaster and indicates that the reinforced concrete construction is easy to creak. Second one is the large lateral displacements. Third one is the loosening or failing of connections and failure of connections to foundation. After Kocaeli and Duzce earthquakes in 1999 at Turkey people aware the stronger structure of the wooden buildings.

Works cited Dogangun, Adem. "Traditional wooden buildings and their damages during earthquakes in Turkey." Engineering Failure Analysis 13.6 (2006): 981-96. Engelebert, Jean, Jean. "Wooden building system: the development of a building system." + U-    Architecture & Urbanism no. 366 (2001): 4-13. Stener, Bertil. "Research Results Prove it's Cheaper and Better with Wood.“ Forestry Chronicle 77.1 (2001): 31. Sathre, Roger. "Using wood products to mitigate climate change: External costs and structural change" Applied Energy 86.2 (2009): 251-57.     Will, Pryce. Buildings in Wood New York : Rizzoli, c2005. http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/umwelt_naturschutz/bericht-105685.html