Are skyscrapers now being made out of wood? Why would construction companies do this?

Historically there have been a number of factors limiting wood framed high rises.

First, has been combustibility. With such large populations that have to pass through such narrow areas such as elevator and stair cores an increase of possible fire made such designs unfeasible. North America and Europe had hard caps on wood framed buildings at about 5 stories or 60 feet in height. Since that time we’ve developed several strategies to combat this. Better controlled egress, better fire resistant wood framed construction, and lastly wood framed systems that can maintain their structural properties even during a fire. The most resistive element to building height has been combustibility. Once that threat is eliminated is falls to other factors.

Second, wood sources have been yielding weaker and weaker wood materials. Over time we’ve come up with solutions. By combining layers or chips or wood fiber with resins and adhesives we’ve come up with scalable wood products of great strength compared to “natural” wood members. Additionally, since these can be “layered up” they can be produced at any size at any length. Suddenly, you can produce a beam or column several feet wide by several feet thick that is over a hundred feet long. We’ve never been able to do that before.

Once you have those two items addressed you now have a material that can compete with steel and concrete. And yes, we are starting to build high rises out of wood now.