Time destroys everything we build—steel rusts, concrete cracks, and wood rots away. It’s a fundamental law of nature. But in the skyline of Vancouver, Canada, that law has been broken. Believe it or not, a 25-story tower made of wood isn’t decaying as it ages. With every passing year, it harnesses the elements to grow stronger, hardening like ancient stone.
This architectural marvel is called Ascent One, and it represents a leap in engineering so profound it borders on alchemy. While it may look like a warm, organic structure standing proudly against its neighbours of cold steel and glass, its true secret is hidden within its very fibers. The tower is built from massive panels of Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT), a type of engineered wood already stronger than you can imagine. But the designers, a forward-thinking team from the University of British Columbia and Michael Green Architecture, weren’t satisfied with just “strong.” They wanted something extraordinary.
The tower’s secret lies in a revolutionary coating infused with nano-silica and lignin—the very glue that holds trees together. When the famously humid Vancouver air touches the building’s surface, a microscopic transformation begins. The silica particles bond with the wood fibers, causing the material to harden and become denser over time. Instead of rotting or weakening, Ascent One is petrifying before our very eyes. The longer it stands, the more fire-resistant and durable it becomes. It is a building that ages not like wood, but like stone.
But the wonders of this living tower don’t stop there. Stranger still is what holds it together and keeps it warm. The insulation wasn’t manufactured in a factory; it was grown in a lab from mycelium foam, the same sprawling root network that produces mushrooms! The adhesives that bind its mighty beams are carbon-negative, meaning they store more carbon than was used to make them. Even its sealants are plant-based. To monitor its own health, the building is fitted with a nervous system of embedded sensors, tracking its internal strength and moisture in real-time. This isn’t just a structure; it’s a living, breathing organism.
This incredible design has a profound impact on our planet. In an age where buildings are responsible for a massive portion of global carbon emissions, Ascent One does the opposite. By using sustainably harvested timber and carbon-trapping materials, the tower is officially “net-negative.” It has sequestered over 2,800 metric tons of carbon dioxide—more than all the emissions created during its transportation, construction, and entire operational lifecycle combined. That’s equivalent to taking over 600 gasoline-powered cars off the road for an entire year. It is a building that literally cleans the air around it.
Ascent One is not a lone curiosity; it is the herald of a dawning “timber age.” Its even taller cousin-in-waiting, a concept known as Canada’s Earth Tower, is already on the drawing board. Imagined by the global firm Perkins+Will for developer Delta Land Development, this planned 40-story giant will be a hybrid, a clever marriage of a concrete core for stability and a soul of mass timber. It aims for the holy grail of green building—Passive House certification and zero fossil fuels in its operation—and will feature lush communal gardens every third floor, creating a vertical forest in the heart of the city.
For centuries, we have built our cities from stone and steel, creating concrete jungles that stand in opposition to the natural world. But today, a new chapter is being written. These Canadian towers prove that our future can be different—one where our cities are not just sustainable, but regenerative. A future where our buildings are grown as much as they are built, and where they work with nature, not against it. The concrete jungles of the past are giving way to the living forests of the future. And it’s all happening, believe it or not, right now.
