Shigeru Ban's timber-skeleton Tamedia building left engineers "incredulous"

Continuing our Timber Revolution series, we look at the Tamedia Office Building in Zurich by Shigeru Ban – Switzerland's first seven-storey mass-timber structure that was barely legal at the time of its completion in 2013.
Designed as an extension to the neighbouring headquarters of Swiss publishing group Tamedia, the office takes over a prominent site on the banks of the river Sihl and leaves its timber skeleton exposed for all to see, sheathed only by the building's glass skin.
Its prefa