Monthly Update: March 2020

To help battle the coronavirus outbreak, governors of several states have shut down all but essential services in recent days. This has left building departments, state building associations, and elected officials inundated with questions from contractors in affected areas. Heads of AEC firms of all sizes and functions, including subcontractors and architects, are looking for guidance on whether their work can proceed.

For now, it appears that the shutdowns that have been enacted so far exempt most construction activities, but with caveats. Click here for Construction Dive’s map tracking construction closures across the country.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced on March 16, 2020 that workers that support the manufacture and distribution of forest products, including, but not limited to timber and other wood products, are deemed essential critical infrastructure workers. These workers “have a special responsibility” to maintain their current work schedule according to guidance issued by the President regarding COVID-19. See the original press release here.

Additionally, The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) has developed a generalized state tracking list, updated as of March 24, which you can access here.

A popular radio show and podcast, Science Friday, recently explored how the building materials sector is working to adapt and respond to climate change. The segment noted the introduction and spread of mass timber as a turnkey intervention in making the industry more carbon friendly and featured a discussion with experts Frank Lowenstein, chief conservation officer with the New England Forestry Foundation, and Casey Malmquist, founder and CEO of timber company SmartLam North America.

In addition to talking about mass timber, the program also touched on how the concrete industry is working to respond to growing pressure to ameliorate its carbon footprint, which currently equates to roughly 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Science Friday reaches an estimated 1.8 million listeners each week.

Listen to the episode here.

Metrostudy continues to track the single-family built-for-rent (SFBFR) sector and its influence on builders and the housing market. While the primary source of single-family rental housing remains attributable to older single-family homes switching from owner- to renter-occupied, a growing number of homebuilders are exploring SFBFR production to access this emerging market. SFBFR construction accounted for just below 5% of all single-family construction starts from the final quarter of 2018 through the third quarter of 2019. Though seemingly modest, this is up from an average of 2.7% from 1992 to 2012.

Metrostudy continues to observe sizable geographic variation in where SFBFR is taking hold, with nearly a quarter of all SFBFR homes occurring in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

Read more about the latest SFBRF trends here.

New Land Enterprises has announced that the 260-unit residential mass timber tower named Ascent will break ground in Milwaukee this spring, with expected completion in the spring of 2022. Once finished, Ascent will be the tallest mass timber building in the world, overtaking Mjøstårnet in Norway by three feet.

The 25-story Ascent building will feature a concrete base followed by stories of mass timber made from white spruce trees. Jason Korb of Korb and Associates Architects estimates that Ascent will capture enough carbon dioxide to equal taking 2,400 cars off the road for a year. Ascent’s development is financed in part by a federal wood innovation grant. The project is expected to set an example for future mass timber buildings in the United States and throughout the world.

Read the latest news on the project here.

The Washington Forest Protection Association (WFPA) recently placed an article in the Seattle Times to promote the importance of sustainable forest management, its role in supporting rural economies in Washington, and its unique ability to provide a sustainable supply of carbon-sequestering wood products. The WFPA noted that the advent of CLT and other mass timber products creates additional environmental benefits by offering a viable substitution for energy- and carbon-intensive materials such as concrete.

The WFPA is a trade association that represents private forest landowners in the state. An estimated 22 million acres are forested in Washington, 8 million of which are private. Washington is the second-largest producer of softwood lumber in the United States.

Read more here.

The Architect’s Newspaper recently featured commentary by LEVER Architecture’s founder and principal, Thomas Robinson, discussing the impact California could have on the softwood lumber industry should it become an early adopter of the 2021 IBC tall timber provisions. A growing number of states and municipalities, including Oregon, Washington, and Denver, Colorado, have already signed on as early adopters.

Robinson notes that, as the world’s fifth-largest economy, California can transform markets through its standards and codes. In the case of mass timber, Robinson believes that California’s early adoption would be catalytic in encouraging innovation and increased investment in all dimensions of the mass timber value chain, including sustainable forest management, research, and supply chain development. Beyond the economics of California’s action, Robinson believes its early adoption is also necessary to scale a low-carbon, renewable supply chain to mitigate the growing threat of climate change.

Read Robinson’s piece here.

The University of Toronto has announced that construction of its 14-story, 80-meter-tall Academic Wood Tower building will begin this spring. The tower, which will be built over the campus’s existing Goldring Centre, will be constructed of glue-laminated (glulam) timber columns, decks, bracing, and core, made using Canadian spruce, pine, and fir.

The university and its design team, composed of Toronto architectural firm MJMA and Vancouver’s Patkau Architects, were intentional in selecting mass timber for the Academic Tower for its sustainability and lower carbon footprint, in keeping with the university’s low-carbon action plan.

The Academic Wood Tower is, to date, the largest tall mass timber structure of its kind to go up in North America.

Read more about the project here.

The University of Washington is integrating mass timber into the design and construction of its new Health Sciences Education Building (HSEB), a four-story, nearly 100,000-square-foot project it is designing in partnership with Miller Hull, the S/L/A/M Collaborative, and Lease Crutcher Lewis. The university prioritized mass timber based on the package of benefits it provides to the university’s campus and student body, the environment, and the regional economy.

The project’s use of CLT is supported in part by two federal grants—one will fund a study of mass timber’s vibration characteristics and its impact on building tenants; the other aims to increase the use of mass timber in buildings used for higher education. The HSEB is slated to open in summer 2022.

Read more about the HSEB here.