SLB Working Group Convenes, Clarifies Vision | SLB Newsletter June 2021

Metropolis Think Tank recently convened experts for its “Working with Timber – New Possibilities for Design, Construction, and Sustainability” webinar, hosted by DLR Group and featuring its principal, Steve Cavanaugh; Jacob Mans, professor, University of Minnesota; John Carmichael, builder, New South Construction; and Pete Kobelt, mass timber manufacturer and fabricator, Element5. The panel discussion covered a wide range of issues, including mass timber’s sustainability advantages, forest management, aesthetic and biophilic benefits, innovations in timber construction, and the increasingly enabling environment created by education and policy advancements.

Read more about the panel here.

Seattle-based Green Canopy recently announced that it will develop a seven-unit, 7,950-square-foot mass timber modular townhouse project, a first in the city of Seattle. The project, which will use CLT panels from Alberta-based manufacturer ROC Modular, is scheduled to be built in 2022.

The project is among several new mass timber developments occurring in Puget Sound, along with a 46,000-square-foot mass timber office park being developed by LMN Architects in Kirkland; a Bill Gates-backed project in Kirkland; and the creation of the Darrington Wood Innovation Center in Snohomish County, which will produce CLT.

Read more about these developments here.

Building Design + Construction recently streamed new video content featuring an interview with the seasoned mass timber designer Tom Chung, FAIA, LEED AP, principal with the Boston-based architectural design firm Leers Weinzapfel Associates. Chung spoke about the latest design trends and innovations in mass timber construction. Chung and Leers Weinzapfel Associates have been involved in some of the United States’ most significant recent mass timber projects, including the John W. Olver Design Building at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and Adohi Hall at the University of Arkansas.

Watch Chung’s interview here.

In late May, the Green Construction through Wood (GCWood) program released the inaugural edition of The State of Mass Timber in Canada 2021 (SMTC), a first-of-its-kind report providing insights into market trends in Canada’s mass timber sector. In addition to its data and analysis, the report highlights Canada’s mass timber production capacity, several domestic mass timber building projects, and mass timber’s role in a successful bioeconomy.

GCWood also published an interactive map to complement the SMTC report. The map provides information and location details on nearly 500 mass timber projects and 21 manufacturing facilities, and users are invited to submit additional project and manufacturing sites as they come online.

Read more about the SMTC here.

In a recent piece in Multi-Housing News, Joe Alcock of McMillan Pazdan Smith stresses how a change in the 2018 International Building Code (IBC) permits greater flexibility in podium construction in multifamily building projects. Specifically, the IBC change allows for taller podium construction, which means multiple stories of wood construction can be built on top of a multistory concrete or steel (or combination) structure. Taller podiums can in turn help designers and builders maximize their use of space, particularly in urban areas, while also reducing the overall cost of construction.

To date, the code change has been adopted in 12 states and two territories.

Read more about the benefits of this code change to the softwood lumber industry here.

At the recent “The Future of Building Materials: Embodied Carbon and Why It Matters” panel discussion during the Urban Land Institute’s Virtual Spring Meeting, sustainability experts detailed strategies for reducing emissions from building construction, including by incorporating cost-efficient alternative materials such as mass timber.

The experts agreed that building owners are increasingly keen to reduce their embodied carbon footprints and, along with designers, are carefully considering where and how they source their materials as a means to lower their footprints. In addition to alternative materials, the experts also noted the need to reduce waste throughout all stages of construction, which is consistent with the benefits touted by prefabrication.

Read more about the panel discussion here.

On a recent episode of MarketScale’s Cross-Sections program, host Anthony Gude spoke with WoodWorks’ Ricky McLain, PE, SE, Senior Technical Director of Tall Wood, about the program’s role in providing expert, project-specific support and education to the building design and construction industry, and the trends and opportunities WoodWorks is observing in industrialized construction, mass timber, and tall buildings. A trained structural engineer and WoodWorks’ in-house tall wood expert, McLain is particularly well versed on architectural, fire, and life safety and structural design topics related to mass timber and its rapid rise across the United States.

Click to watch McLain’s interview here.

The San Jose City Council has unanimously approved Google’s master plan to transform 80 acres on the edge of downtown into Downtown West, a new transit- and sustainability-oriented neighborhood, replete with housing, commercial, and recreational spaces and structures.

The project is the largest economic development deal ever made in San Jose, and it is expected to bring up to 25,000 jobs to the city. Infrastructure construction is expected to begin in 2022, with building construction following in 2023. Per the deal, Google will provide $200 million in community benefits and construct at least 1,000 affordable housing units, which will amount to approximately one-quarter of all housing units constructed.

Google recently opted for mass timber construction for a similar, albeit much smaller, sustainability-oriented project in Sunnyvale, California.

Read more about the San Jose development here.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge’s Construction Innovation Lab and TWI Ltd., an association of welding industries, have successfully joined timber elements using linear friction welding. This innovation could open the door for producing mass timber without a bonding agent, such as the layer of polyurethane glue that is commonly used in CLT manufacturing.

TWI started applying friction welding to wood in 2019 after using it with other materials. The researchers claim that “the process has many potential benefits, including environmental factors as the joining doesn’t require the addition of any other materials to the wood.”

Read more about this innovation here.

A new report from the Swedish Forest Industries Federation rebuts the suggestion that harvesting wood leads to a “carbon debt,” which takes decades to pay off via new trees. Instead, its analysis found that no forest carbon debt accrues, even in the short term, if and as forests are managed to increase both standing volume and wood supply and as forest products themselves displace large quantities of fossil fuel emissions associated with other materials and manufacturing processes.

A robust forest bioeconomy is central to the equation, as when in place concurrently, sustainably managed forests and efficient wood products value chains are unique in being able to offer substantial and immediate climate benefits—as well as important co-benefits in the form of jobs and financial returns—in the forest-based sector.

Access a report summary and findings here.