Monthly Update: December 2020

After more than four decades in the Timber industry, Chuck Roady will be retiring from the F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber Company at the end of December. Armed with a degree in Forestry from the University of Idaho and a desire to protect and develop forests, Roady joined the Pack River Company, starting at the bottom and growing into a leadership role through several acquisitions. Roady joined the F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber Company as vice president and general manager in 2003. In addition to new responsibilities, Roady continued his tireless advocacy for the proper management of forest lands.

Roady served as a member of several groups over the years, including the SLB Board of Directors and the Federal Forest Resource Coalition.

Thank you for your countless contributions to the forestry industry and congratulations on your well-deserved retirement Chuck Roady. Read more about Roady’s career and legacy here.

The California Institute of Technology announced its plans to build an 80,000-square-foot research laboratory made of mass timber at its Pasadena campus. Named the Resnick Sustainability Resource Center, the building is being designed by CannonDesign’s Yazdani Studio and will feature three stories of mass timber and glass with an additional underground level. The school aspires for the building to serve as “a hub for energy and sustainability research,” which made mass timber an obvious choice.

Read more about the project and see a rendering here.

According to the latest data from the National Association of Home Builders’ Home Building Geography Index, consumer demand for housing in suburbs and exurbs continues to grow, including at the expense of urban cores. The trend is fueled by a desire for more space at lower cost, in many cases prompted by the widespread shift to teleworking.

Suburbs of medium-sized cities recorded the largest single-family housing gains in the third quarter, posting a 15% growth rate over the last four quarters. Large metro urban cores performed the worst, posting only a 5.7% gain and a 0.8% drop in market share for single-family construction. The pace of multifamily home building in large metro core areas also declined by 4% over the past year.

Read more about these trends here.

Construction Dive’s Modular Monitor series recently reviewed trends affecting modular construction over the past year. Not surprisingly, most trends – whether positive or negative – were unpinned by the coronavirus pandemic. On the plus side, modular’s speed and efficiency advantages were on full display as manufacturers quickly assembled rapid-response medical facilities, and modular’s controlled manufacturing environment helped maintain worker health and safety. On the down side, the segment has not been immune to the overall slumping economic climate, and the construction of several large, permanent modular structures has been put on hold.

Read more here.

Treehugger recently featured a collaborative effort by GG-Loop and Arup to fuse modular construction, the latest trends in biophilic design, and the idea of regenerative construction in a proposed multifamily housing project in Amsterdam. The project envisions the prominent use of CLT to satisfy its design goals, as CLT’s cost-efficiency and flexibility make it well suited for modular; it supports net-zero or even net-positive construction; and wood invokes nature as few other materials can.

Read more about this innovative project and see renderings here.

Mass timber’s potential to help mitigate climate change continues to make headlines worldwide. A recent piece in the Economist notes that while there is general consensus that using mass timber instead of concrete and steel can reduce the construction industry’s greenhouse gas emissions, the net effect of the shift to mass timber requires further investigation and quantification, particularly with regard to forest restoration and land use. As mass timber supply chain development can incentivize and reinforce sustainable forest management and improve carbon sequestration, policies will need to catch up to ensure that mass timber’s potential to mitigate climate change is realized.

Hennebery Eddy Architects recently profiled Summit Development’s 10-story New Industrial Revolution (NIR) Center in Portland, Oregon, one of the first projects proposed in Portland under the new building code for Type IV-B mass timber construction. By choosing a hybrid solution, the project is set to deliver desired environmental impacts while still trimming construction times and costs. According to life cycle analysis led by the SORA Design Group, the NIR Center will reduce its embodied carbon footprint by 39.3% compared with a business-as-usual building scenario, achieved chiefly by using mass timber and reducing cement content.

Read more about the project here.

A new “Construction Materials Pyramid” published by Denmark’s Royal Academy of Design, Architecture and Preservation has been making the rounds on the internet and offers a quick and easy way to learn about and compare the potential environmental and carbon impacts of various wood and steel building products.

In a new infographic, the housing experts at John Burns Real Estate Consulting tout build-for-rent as the most winning proposition in the housing industry these days. They base their conclusion on growing demand, historic price stability even during economic downturns, high occupancy rates, and the growing consumer preference – especially among 25- to 54-year-olds – to rent instead of owning a single-family home.

In a second piece, John Burns experts offer a glimpse into the data behind their promotion of build-for-rent. The Burns Single-Family Rent Index™ for September 2020, published in November, shows the distribution and rate of growth of the build-for-rent segment nationwide, with 14 urban centers posting 5% or greater gains year-over-year, and a score more posting year-over-year gains of 2% or higher.

View the infographic here and the index map here.

Using funding from a U.S. Forest Service Wood Innovation Grant, a team from the University of Oregon’s Institute for Health in the Built Environment and School of Architecture & Environment is advancing research to demonstrate wood’s performance in healthcare facilities, including in relation to disease control, in the hopes of increasing acceptance of mass timber.

In the study, researchers are monitoring mass timber samples that have been inoculated with pathogens that mimic certain viruses and bacteria in controlled, sterilized environments to determine microbial growth and survival, and how these compare with plastics and other materials commonly found in healthcare settings.

Read more about the study here.

Toronto-based architecture firm Dialog, together with engineering and construction partners, has conceptualized a 105-story mass timber skyscraper that has virtually no carbon footprint in situ. By incorporating as much mass timber as possible in the design, the team estimates that the building’s embodied carbon drops by nearly 50% compared with if the building were traditionally built.

Read more about the design and other upcoming tall mass timber buildings here.