Introduction Nowadays, besides the architecture, the building must also consider ecological characteristics alongside the construction forms and the engineering criteria of materials. In the light of this consideration, the future role of timber in buildings needs to be re-examined. Addi- tionally, it is known that the modern architecture demands even more transparency in building elements as interior elements like shear walls, beams or ceilings. Since glass has an utmost advantage in transparency, it can be uti- lized in buildings not only as a window element but also as a load-bearing structural material. Timber-glass composite building elements may be a good alternative giving architects and engineers new op- portunities for novel load bearing systems.By using load bearing timber-glass composite elements, it is possible to use timber and glass together and thus adding trans- parency as a quality to a natural, ecological material. The composite elements combine the best of the characteris- tics of two different materials for a common purpose. In structural terms, the timber assumes good bending be- haviour, being ductile to compression, whereas the glass presents a very positive result in terms of the compres- sion force (Pequeno and Cruz 2009). The main character- istic of this composite system is that timber provides Load Bearing Timber-Glass Composites: New Opportunities for Turkey HALET ALMILA ARDA BUYUKTASKIN*, GUZIDE ASLANKAYA AND MORVARID DILMAGHANI Department of Architecture, Istanbul Technical University, Taskisla Campus, 34437 Istanbul, Turkey *Corresponding author: almila@itu.edu.tr, +90 212 2931300 / 2284 Buyuktaskin, H. A. A., Aslankaya, G. and Dilmaghani, M. 2017. Load Bearing Timber-Glass Composites: New Opportunities for Turkey. Baltic Forestry 23(3): 698705. Abstract Nowadays, timber with its natural appearance and glass with its transparent characteristics provide new opportunities for architects and engineers in construction as load-bearing systems. The main aim of presented research is to introduce timber- glass composite structural elements as new products to the Turkish market. A questionnaire method has been evaluated with the timber industries with the aim to gather market insight into the production of timber-glass components in order to query the knowledge of the timber industries about the suitability of timber-glass composite as a structural element. In line with this research, potential architectural design applications called pilot projects are presented by using timber-glass composites as load bearing elements. The pilot projects throughout will provide insights into the practicality and applicability of the developed composite systems in creating different design and application solutions. According to the respondents of the questionnaire, the timber industries in Turkey indicated that load-bearing capacity of timber-glass composite structural elements can be advantageous and the new structural element will be probably able to compete with other alternative structural elements in Turkey. Keywords: Composite systems, timber-glass composite systems, questionnaire, pilot project, timber industries ductility and glass offers resistance and stiffness. The bonding system is also very important for the strength of the composite system (Cruz and Pequeno 2008). The adhesive provides strength and flexibility. That is the path to its structural utilization necessarily when sub- jected to transmission of heavy loading (Cruz et al. 2007). Furthermore, by the research project of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, industrialized products based on timber-glass composite elements are developed responding to the structural requirements, climate de- mands, fire protection and humidity. Its position within the building can vary; it can be integrated into the fa- cade, the roof, in the interior as a partition wall and even as a floor element (Saleh Pascha 2014). Recently, com- posite elements that combine timber and glass have been analysed within several research projects (Winter et al. 2010, Eriksson et al. 2013) and a number of final disserta- tions are presented (Blyberg 2011, Neijbert 2013). Moreover, a prototype of a load-bearing timber-glass composite facade has been developed and a simple dem- onstration object has been constructed. The main idea of the prototype is to produce a showroom as an outlook on how a facade made with such building components could be carried out, and what it could look like in a real building. The interfaces between load-bearing timber-glass compos- ite elements to the roof and to the floor has been designed. ISSN 2029-9230 698 2017, Vol. 23, No. 3 (46) H.A.A. BUYUKTASKIN ET AL. BALTIC FORESTRY LOAD BEARING TIMBER-GLASS COMPOSITES: NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR TURKEY