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With the worldwide construction sector being responsible for one third of carbon dioxide emissions, as well as forty percent of the world’s energy use and waste production, a shift to sustainable and renewable construction techniques is crucial. Engineered timber, a champion of sustainable construction materials, has evolved to a stage that enables the construction of not only family housing but also taller buildings so far commonly built from concrete or steel. Designing taller timber buildings made is more demanding than their concrete and steel counterparts. Whereas different design aspects (architectural, structural, fire safety, acoustics, etc.) of concrete buildings can work almost independently, the design of taller timber buildings should be performed with intensive collaboration among the design teams. It is therefore crucial to address taller multi-storey timber buildings from a collaborative and interdisciplinary perspective, considering static, dynamic, fire, acoustic, human health, and other aspects in parallel and not in isolation. Only through interdisciplinary analysis and interaction can a set of holistic design guidelines be developed that will enable the safe construction of taller timber buildings, as well as respect human wellbeing demands. In this paper, the COST Action CA20139 will be presented and the main aims will be discussed.

The construction sector contributes significantly to climate change and energy consumption. The decarbonization can be facilitated when energy- and resource- intensive materials such as concrete is broadly replaced with renewable materials such as timber. An extensiveutilisation of timber in structures demands carefully defined and compulsory applied design rules that maximize the value of the natural resource under consideration of environmental impacts. This largely exceeds the scope of the decision rules in current structural design codes, which have been conceived with the primary objective of sufficient safety. The paper stresses the usefulness of risk-informed optimization approaches for enhancing the decision scope of these rules with consideration of the environmental performance of structures. Taking widely implemented life cycle assessment approaches as a basis, it is discussed how existing optimization frameworks could be modified to this end, with emphasis on the global warming potential of timber structures.