Soaring above the neighboring Mjøsa lake, more than 100 kilometers north of Oslo, the 280-foot-tall Mjøstårnet tower became the world's tallest timber building when it opened last year.

The 18-story structure contains apartments, office space and the aptly-named Wood Hotel.

And beyond putting a small town on the world map, it has added to a growing body of evidence that timber can provide a sustainable alternative to concrete and steel.

"To get attention, you have to build tall," said Øystein Elgsaas, a partner at the architecture practice behind the record-breaking tower, Voll Arkitekter, in a video call.

"And when you have the world's tallest building made of timber, everybody says, 'Wow, what's going on in Norway?'"

"People are interested, and that is actually the most important part of this building -- to showcase that it is possible, and to inspire others to do the same."

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The record-breaking feat was realized thanks to a type of engineered wood called cross-laminated timber, or CLT.

Part of a larger group of materials known as engineered wood, or mass timber, it is produced by gluing strips of laminated wood together at 90-degree angles to one another, before they're compressed into huge beams or panels under extreme pressure.

The resulting wooden towers -- sometimes dubbed "plyscrapers" -- were once the preserve of conceptual designers.

But thanks to changes in building regulations and shifting attitudes towards the material, they are quickly becoming a reality.

A slew of new timber high-rises is set to break ground or open in 2020. HoHo Vienna, a mixed-use development just five feet shorter than Mjøstårnet, has just opened for business in Austria.

And while Europe has traditionally led the charge, North America is quickly catching up.

In Vancouver -- a city already home to a 174-foot-tall wooden student residence -- the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Shigeru Ban has designed a "hybrid" condo complex comprising a steel and concrete core with a timber frame that will open this year.

Meanwhile in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, work on a 238-foot wooden apartment block, Ascent, is set to begin in June.

Climate economics

Advocates for mass timber claim that, compared to existing alternatives, these towers are quicker to construct, stronger and, perhaps most surprisingly, safer in the event of a fire. It may, however, be their green credentials that explain wood's rising popularity in recent years.

The construction and operation of buildings accounts for 40% of the world's energy consumption, and approximately one-third of greenhouse gas emissions.

But while concrete emits a huge amount of carbon, trees instead absorb it throughout their lifetime.

If those trees are then turned into mass timber, that carbon is "locked in," or sequestered, rather than returned to the atmosphere when the tree dies.

Studies suggest that 1 cubic meter of wood can store more than a ton of carbon dioxide.

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The developers of Milwaukee's Ascent apartment complex, for instance, claim that its use of timber represents the equivalent of taking 2,100 cars off the road.

"Trees store carbon, so if you harvest them at the right age when they can't absorb much more or grow much further, then it's a better solution to use them as a building material," said Elgsaas.

"If buildings are designed with longevity in mind, they could keep the carbon out of the atmosphere for generations. "It prolongs the trees' lifespans (before they decompose) by maybe 100 or 200 years, if done correctly."

Counting cost

Cross-laminated timber has been used for low-rise buildings in European countries like Germany and Austria since the 1990s, and the environmental benefits of using mass timber have long been known.

So why the recent surge in interest?

According to architect Michael Green, a longstanding advocate for -- and designer of -- wooden buildings, there are "a whole bunch of things converging right now." But since his 2013 Ted talk, in which he predicted a coming "revolution" in timber construction, there has been one especially significant shift: cost

As mass timber becomes increasingly common, more CLT factories are built and economies of scale reduce prices.

"There's more knowledge in the marketplace, more competition, more supply chains ... At the time of my Ted talk there was no real infrastructure," Green said over the phone. "Incrementally, as were seeing more competition, the cost is coming down."

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Price had always been "a barrier," Green said.

Take SHoP Architects' 10-story design, which won a government competition to occupy a site in New York's Chelsea district, only to be dropped due to worries over its market feasibility.

Or Framework, an ambitious 148-foot-tall timber tower in Portland, Oregon, that was set to be the USA's tallest wooden tower before was canceled amid cost concerns last year.

However, the cost of cross-laminated timber has fallen in recent years and is now "at par" with traditional materials, Green said.

Likewise, Elgsaas reported that the developer behind Norway's Mjøstårnet tower found the final sum to be "about the same" as a steel and concrete alternative