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Governments can help nudge the industry to use more wood, particularly in the public sector—the construction industry’s biggest client. That would help wood-building specialists achieve greater scale and lower costs. Zero-carbon building regulations should be altered to take account of the emissions that are embodied in materials. This would favour wood as well as innovative ways of producing other materials. — The Economist
The Economist compares the environmental impact of the industrialized world's most common building materials, cement and steel, with that of carbon-trapping wood, and how an earnest effort to reach the emission goals outlined in the Paris Climate Agreement cannot ignore building with timber on a... View full entry
New Land Enterprises has announced a bold plan to build a 21-story mass timber apartment building in East Town. If completed, the building, known as Ascent, would be the tallest timber structure in the Western Hemisphere according to the company.
The news comes just months after New Land released plans to build a seven-story mass timber office building, the city’s first, along the Milwaukee River in Westown.
— Urban Milwaukee
The timber tower scheme was designed by Milwaukee-based Korb + Associates Architects with structural engineering input from Thornton Tomasetti. If completed as proposed, the 21-story residential building would rise 238 feet—considerably more than the currently tallest timber building in the... View full entry
Earlier this week, the Oregon Building Codes Division announced a statement of alternate method (SAM) that makes Oregon the first state to allow for construction of wooden high-rises without special consideration. Previously, Portland, Ore., was the first American city to issue a permit for an all-wood high-rise, Project’s 12-story-tall Framework. — engineering.com
The statement of alternate method (SAM) was developed over two years by a committee created from the International Code Council’s Board of Directors. The committee proposed 14 suggestions concerning cross-laminated timber standards and best-practices, which were all accepted by the Oregon... View full entry
Changing the mindset behind short-term wooden constructions is MIT. A group of researchers at the university are leading an initiative to investigate new mass timber designs- wood-based buildings designed to be more efficient and cheaper than, yet just as durable as, concrete and steel buildings. The team proposes building mass timber longhouses - large wooden engineered houses built from massive pieces of timber. — interestingengineering.com
Mass Timber Design, MIT's architecture workshop exploring sustainable building design at the intersection of architecture and technology, has developed a Longhouse prototype. Mass timber, a wood-based building design and construction technology, has continued to be explored for its... View full entry
In 2015, the U.S. Department of Agriculture decided to run a pilot program to support two tall wood demonstration projects in order to test the potential of the increasingly popular building material. The first was a 10-story residential tower in Chelsea designed by SHoP. The second, a 12-story... View full entry
A Menlo Park company called Katerra announced that it had acquired Michael Green Architecture, a 25-person architecture firm in Vancouver, British Columbia. On June 12, the company revealed that it had bought another, larger architecture firm, Atlanta-based Lord Aeck Sargent. This comes five months after Katerra raised $865 million in venture capital from funders led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund, which has also invested heavily in the co-working startup WeWork. — City Lab
Startup Katerra looks to revolutionize the construction industry through streamlining the entire process with their design-build model. The company has acquired Michael Green Architecture, known for designing tall wood buildings, and Lord Aeck Sargent. With these two firms obtained, Katerra... View full entry
[...] one Washington, D.C. architecture firm wants Philly to become a trailblazer in the future of high-rise construction.
Specifically, it wants Comcast to build its rumored third tower out of wood — mass timber, to be exact. [...]
At 62 stories, Timber Towers would be the first high-rise to utilize mass timber. Two office towers are linked by a connecting bridge, with a third tower including residences, a school and ground floor retail.
— Philly Voice
“Mass Timber Design and Research” by architect Susan Jones, the owner of Seattle-based atelierjones, is a handy resource for learning about the emergence of Mass Timber construction technology in the U.S. Thanks to publisher ORO Editions, Archinect is giving away five copies of the book to our... View full entry
Lotus Equity Group announced on Monday plans to bring the largest mass timber office building in the United States to the Newark waterfront. Michael Green Architecture has been tapped to design the 500,000-square-foot office building made with a wooden structure for Riverfront Square, a massive... View full entry
Spurred by concerns over climate change and the negative impacts of concrete manufacturing, architects and developers in France are increasingly turning to wood for their office towers and apartment complexes.
Concrete was praised through much of the 20th century for its flexibility, functionality, and relative affordability. [...] Today, however, wood is lauded for its smaller environmental footprint and the speed with which buildings can be assembled.
— Citylab
