2022 Mass Timber Competition Winners Announced; SLB Matched Funding Supports Six 2022 Wood Innovations Grant Winners | SLB June 2022 Newsletter

WoodWorks enjoyed significant attention at the Urban Land Institute’s (ULI) spring meeting in San Diego, which engaged more than 4,400 cross-disciplinary real estate and land-use experts in discussions about the built environment. As part of the meeting, WoodWorks hosted two sessions on mass timber construction for over 300 developers and investors.

In “Business Case: Real Numbers on Real Mass Timber Deals,” WoodWorks introduced the session and drew attention to three new mass timber case studies of interest—the six-story District Office building in Portland, Oregon; the four-story 1 De Haro office building in Sacramento, California; and Adohi Hall, a 202,491-square-foot on-campus housing project at the University of Arkansas. WoodWorks’ current business case study package, which contains seven mass timber projects, is available on WoodWorks’ website.

In “Mass Timber: Contributing to Wildfire Resilience and Financial Returns,” WoodWorks discussed the connection between mass timber and wildfire resilience with Paul Hessburg, Research Landscape Ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service, and Paul Stein, Managing Partner at SKS Partners, the developer of 1 De Haro. Stein credits mass timber with helping to advance and secure financing for 1 De Haro, ultimately achieving California’s first large-scale, speculative office building constructed with CLT. GlobeSt.com, a commercial real estate publication, covered this session in “Mass Timber a Key Material for ESG-Driven Tenants.”

Photo credit: District Office, Hacker

At a recent International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials’ technical hearings, the American Wood Council (AWC) submitted public comments and testified against two proposed changes to the 2024 Uniform Plumbing and Mechanical Codes that would unnecessarily hinder mass timber construction. The changes sought to limit the use of plastic piping in mass timber construction and to add a requirement for the engineered design of plumbing and mechanical systems; both changes would have resulted in increased costs for mass timber building construction.

The AWC’s efforts were successful in that both proposals were amended to remove restrictions on the use of plastic piping in all mass timber buildings, thereby eliminating the threat to the softwood lumber industry. Both proposals will next be voted on at the association’s Technical Committee Convention in September. The AWC will continue to track both proposals and look out for others that may carry an intended or unintended consequence of increasing the cost of mass timber construction.

Lori Koch, the AWC’s director of educational outreach and a structural engineer by training, recently presented updates to the 2021 Special Design Provisions for Wind and Seismic to over 120 engineers at the Oklahoma Structural Engineers Association’s annual meeting. The session covered the SDPWS’s new provisions for the design of CLT diaphragms and shear walls and included a lively Q&A session, during which Koch and participating engineers discussed the justification for design value changes, the use of alternative fastenings, domestic CLT production, and implementing CLT assemblies.

Maintaining relationships with state Structural Engineers Association chapters is an ongoing priority for the AWC and is an effective means to share the latest versions of AWC standards directly with engineers from firms of varying sizes.

Think Wood recently spoke with Ruth Mandl and Bobby Johnston, co-principals of Brooklyn-based CO Adaptive Architecture, about lessons learned from past low-carbon projects and their vision for how low-carbon construction might evolve. Mandl and Johnston’s practice explores how modularized and prefabricated mass timber assemblies, built to Passive House standards, can be used in urban, adaptive reuse projects.

Passive House is a building standard that was developed in Germany in the early 1990s. It focuses on high-performance construction using extensive insulation, energy-efficient windows, and an airtight membrane that wraps entire structures, reducing the impacts of hot and cold weather. When done right, all these factors can combine to reduce the operational energy consumption of a building by 80 to 90%, resulting in reduced emissions and significant energy savings.

According to Mandl, prefabricated timber systems can play an important role in Passive House design. Thermally, wood is superior to steel and offers added thermal mass. All CO Adaptive’s Passive House projects use wood as the primary material. Wood provides more versatility and, given its natural renewability, lends itself to CO Adaptive’s goals of regenerative, circular design.

“Cutting embodied and operational energy is . . . part of a regenerative approach to sustainability,” stated Mandl. “To do this, it makes sense to use low-carbon building materials—like timber—and design for disassembly with adaptability in mind, so that things can be taken apart, reused, and become part of a circular design loop.”

Learn about one of CO Adaptive’s most recent timber projects here.

In May, the SLB and Clemson University’s School of Architecture and Wood Utilization + Design Institute (WU+D) partnered to host a first-ever, four-day, hands-on workshop to educate architecture faculty on mass timber design and building and to discuss strategies for incorporating mass timber into their programming. The workshop featured six interactive sessions on design, cross-disciplinary research and collaborations, curricular frameworks, funding, and sourcing; tours of Clemson’s mass timber facilities; and presentations from eight guest speakers with expertise in building successful, university-level timber design programs. Twenty faculty members from 18 institutions were selected to participate.

In speaking at the workshop’s conclusion, Dustin Albright, Associate Professor and Assistant Director of Clemson’s School of Architecture, noted, “The workshop provided a really great opportunity for diverse faculty from diverse architecture programs across the country to get together and discuss common themes and interests relating to timber design. . . . I know that I learned a lot, and I expect the same is true for everyone who attended.”

The success of the workshop has provided a repeatable model for energizing and supporting faculty to teach material studies and wood design in schools that are doing so today. SLB Education expects to fund additional similar workshops in 2022 and beyond.

Read more about the workshop here.