A young French engineer was helped by a secret agent to encrypt his computer and protect the material he’d invented, which is rot-proof, fire-resistant, strong enough to be used in the construction of tall buildings and even translucent.
A new type of concrete? No. Kryptonite? Not that either, the mysterious new material is wood!
Timothée Boitouzet, an architect by training, has managed to find a way of treating wood to give it unexpected properties that pave the way for a whole new array of applications.
From a technical standpoint, the engineering work consisted of strengthening the molecular structure and replacing the lignin with a biosourced polymer to create Woodoo, a green construction solution based on common but less widely used wood types with a carbon footprint that is half that of concrete and 30 times smaller than that of glass.
By switching to Woodoo, the construction industry could significantly reduce the 2.5 billion tonnes of CO2 generated each year, as long as people aren’t afraid of living or working on the 35th floor of a wood building!
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