We work in a building or studying a building, and then we do groceries in another building.

So many buildings in our lives see, these are like concrete jungles, and they have become our new natural habitat.

There is one problem.

We use millions of tons of steel and concrete toe build that jangles on the production of steel and concrete requires so much energy that it consumes 40% off the total energy consumed worldwide.

Living behind a nervous amount off carbon dioxide.

The primary coz off Grandma Jane.

This puts the building industry on top of the list of the most polluting human activities on the population is still growing.

Each year there is 80 million more of us, so more housing is needed more steel and concrete to build that housing.

The problem is only getting worse.

But now imagine if we could turn this polluting industry into the cleanest one or even better, imagine if we could turn this polluting industry into one that could reverse climate change.

Maybe, maybe it's time to start using a list contaminating material, maybe theme Burr.

Today we have the technology to blue timber planks.

In infinite ways.

We can obtain high strength beams, slaps arches from a structural prospective timber is super strong on.

We're ready to build timber skyscrapers.

Norway has just finished the tourist timber building in the world with 18 stories.

The whole structure is timber.

Timber is also much cheaper.

These opens great opportunities for developing countries.

And of course, timber is beautiful.

Look at the ceiling above you.

So strong, cheap on beautiful, so many benefits, but still the biggest bonus if the sustainability off timber.

As you know, when trees grow there, remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere on there with an oxygen in exchange.

Then trees use this carbon to produce wood and keep growing.

This means that the polluting carbon from the atmosphere is no looked within the tree trunk.

Forests sequester the most carbon during the growing stage.

Once a force is mature, the cycle slows down.

So ideally, we would liketo have continuously growing forests.

We shoot harvest mature trees for construction purposes.

On fill the empty spaces with young trees these way, infrastructures can be seen like enormous carbon storage is the atmosphere could be gone to hell on the building industry could find its path towards a sustainable future.

Steamer skyscrapers sounds like a fantastic, innovative solution to many off our human problems.

We love innovation, not like any other innovation.

It comes with some here and consequences.

For example, everybody thought that plastic was out great material 50 years ago, but finding in our food or smartphones for is your lives.

But sometimes they explode in airplanes, Dembo skyscrapers for climate change cuffs.

It's obvious consequences in this case.

So after saying these, you can guess who I am.

Fire safety engineer.

We can't just build Kimber skyscrapers like this.

That would be a disaster, and I really don't want to be the knowing one who puts a break on innovation.

But safety is also important.

We need to study these.

Let's start with the chemistry.

If we have timber as our fuel on oxygen, which we have in air, we just need a small spark to start a combustion reaction where the folks you do reacts with the timber and the products off any combustion reaction are flames carbon dioxide on water, carbon dioxide.

This means that I got timber structure burns.

All the carbon that was stored within the structure is sent back.

So the atmosphere not to mention that fire challenges life safety.

We don't want to send the occupants of timber building to the atmosphere as well.

So if a timber building burns, our carbon footprint is as big as before.

And we have some serious lawsuits.

No, the good at all is diverse.

Skyscrapers are to become a reality.

We have to make sure that we don't convert them in tow us on that.

People can evacuate safely.

Evacuation.

Very, very important.

Let's have hell upon this as a fire safety engineer.

This is what I see when I look at our single house a compartment when there is a fire inside this compartment the fire safety evacuation strategy looks like this inside.

You are not safe outside.

You're safe inside.

You are not safe outside.

You're safe.

It is false.

In sample we are out way before the fire gets dangers.

But we said we want to go to Ole.

These what I see when I look at the high rise buildings, lots of compartments stucked on top of each other, connected with us, darkest the produce.

That's the gets tricky, working down 20 stories.

Imagine if you had any surgery after playing soccer and maybe we're carrying.

A kid can easily take 40 minutes.

These gifts Ah, lot off time for the fire to grow the uncontrollable dimensions on, even to spread into the staircase where the people are evacuating to prevent that, we have the strategy off containing the fire in the compartment where it started.

Actually, we have toe design buildings in such a way that the fire can't spirit.

This is because, ah, hire a structure can withstand losing one of this compartment.

But if we lose more of this game over to keep the fire in one compartment, it's called compartment ation.

Strategy compartment ation makes you that if I were not spread through the building, its prevalence structure collapse.

But most important, compartment ation makes sure that the staircase, the evacuation paper, is going to be free from smoke and hit, giving people all the time.

They need to evacuate the high rice in one sentence compartment.

Ation is critical for fire safe, high rise buildings for steel and concrete buildings.

This is doable, but how on earth we achieve compartment patient If the compartment itself, the floor, the walls, the ceiling is timber and it burns.

They call me Let's look for a solution.

How this timber burn way the way timber doesn't burn at high temperatures.

Timber, They're composes part of the timber.

The composer's into char, which forms a char layer under remaining part the composer's into flammable gases.

The flammable gases flow out of the timber, mixed with oxygen and react.

So when we see flames, it is not timber burning, but only the global gas is reacting with the oxygen.

All these magics happens in the composing layer, which moves like a front, because once it's done here, it moves deeper into the chamber to keep converting more and more timber into char and cannibal gases.

But this the composing front needs to be hot.

It needs energy to be able to transform timber into child cannibal gases.

On it receives this energy from its own flame are the surface that sneaky nature has already decided some time ago that the chair layer is going to be an excellent insulator, which means that it stops the hit from going through, and after some time we built a pretty picture layer.

So now we have a really good insulate er the figure the char layer less unless heat from the flame kind of reach that the composing front.

So the composing from doesn't have the energy to keep transforming more timber into charm trouble gases.

So the production of the probable gases stops.

If there is no more flammable gases, no more fuel to heat the flame so the flames starts to get smaller and smaller, and eventually it extinguishes all by its own.

This is what we call so extinguishment off timber.

These whole nature has designed trees to withstand raging wildfires by forming this protective travel air as long as the trees thick enough there will be in that healthy would remaining when the flame extinguishes for the tree to survive on.

So it is with buildings.

As long as a timber member is thick enough, this structure can't be stunned.

The charring off the outer layer while the fired exiled.

If you don't believe me, look at this.

This is a historical picture bacon.

After a fire, we can see ah horizontal timber beam supporting toa steel beams that have completely deformed with the hit It's true, the timber BM is charged all over, but still it is maintaining its structural performance.

But the steel beams have completely failed.

So in this case, the timber has performed much better on the steel.

Do you remember Compartment Station?

Well, for timber buildings, self extinguishment is the only way to achieve compartment.

Ation is the only way to prevent structural collapse.

So start extinguishment is the new fire safety strategy.

Poor timber buildings.

So what is my role in all this story experiments?

Lots of experiments.

I wanted to understand how went and why different infrastructures myself extinguish or why they may not so close myself.

In the fire left, I'm constructed hundreds off small timber compartments and I said the fire, I swear, had permission to do that and everything was legal.

So some of these compartments had only one timberwolf.

Other compartments had to timber walls.

All that had to timber will unsettling all the configurations you can imagine.

In the next videos, you will be looking through the door towards the insight off my compartments.

You can see that one of them self extinguishes on the other one kept the burning until it collapsed.

Why?

To answer why?

I had lots of sensors in my experiment on any of them burned by those.

But those that survive give me really good data.

I analyzed all this data and I could answer two questions.

Such as?

How many Timberwolves can I have if I want some extinguishment toe happen Is the same tohave a timber wall of September ceiling?

Or does the temperature of my fire change?

If I have additional timber walls burning?

We basically developed a new fire dynamic theory for timber buildings.

Then we took this new theory and moved into the real world.

We designed ah, full scale timber compartment experiment and set it on fire.

Of course, we put all our new knowledge into this experiment on we break for it the self extinguish.

You can't imagine the tension.

It was burning like hell.

But after some time when the fire started, started to decay, self extinguishing started to happen and eventually it's self extinguish, fully all by its own.

The compartment didn't burn through.

This means that we achieved compartment ation thanks to such extinguishment that this was a success.

We push the boundaries of our knowledge I was showed it.

It's possible.

So again, timber, Skyscrapers beautiful, unsustainable.

We dreamed about impossible and research connected all the bits and pieces from evacuation to compartment ation to set extinguishment on.

Made impossible every day a bit more possible.

Believe this kind of research.

It's used by engineers to design buildings like the 18 story in Norway.

All this is possible because today we understand better.

How thing were burns.

But also we understand whether all the hidden consequences on tricky aspects of fire safety engineering.

If we continue pushing tomorrow, timber skyscrapers will reshape the skylines of our cities.

And hopefully they will change the direction of our future.

Thank you.