SLB Chair Makes Case for Federal Investment, Wood as Carbon & Affordable Housing Solutions + IBC Code Progress | SLB Newsletter August 2021

In a new blog for Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, Kermit Baker, the recently retired director of the center’s Remodeling Futures Program, reflected on key findings from his 25-year career of studying the residential remodeling industry. According to Baker, the remodeling market has been remarkably stable over the past 25 years and has made, and continues to make, vital contributions toward meeting evolving housing needs, including affordable housing. Home improvement decision-making and expenditures have proven fairly predictable over time, with households typically spending more on improvements soon before or immediately after home purchases. Contrary to popular belief, lower-income households are just as important as upper-income households to the overall remodeling market, though the types of improvement investments each group makes differ.

Read Kermit Baker’s entire blog here.

Canada’s Globe and Mail recently covered how building designers are using the aesthetic, biophilic, and sustainability values of wood to help lure tenants back to commercial office spaces, following more than a year of remote work.

The piece cites several well-known real estate investment and architecture firms whose use of mass timber is creating successful outcomes for their commercial clients. Real estate investment firm Hines is chief among these, thanks to its pioneering Timber, Transit, Technology (T3) design. Demand for space in T3 buildings has remained strong despite the pandemic, and Hines expects that mass timber will play a key role in helping workers in mass timber buildings return more quickly than those working in traditional concrete structures. According to Senior Managing Director Syl Apps, “There are a number of studies comparing timber buildings versus nontimber, and they consistently show that across multiple metrics, employees are happier and more productive in environments that are timber.”

Read more about mass timber’s comparative advantages in commercial spaces and the push to return workforces to the office here.

Timber analytics firm Forest2Market published new analysis on the ongoing sustainability and availability of U.S. forests, based on U.S. Forest Service and other data regarding the balance of tree growth and removals over time. The findings indicate that tree growth is outpacing removals by 59% or more across all regions of the United States, signaling an excess of available supply. This dovetails with data that suggests that private forest owners alone are growing 43% more wood than they remove from their timberlands, thanks in part to productivity improvements and innovation.

These findings stand in sharp contrast with the widespread public perception that forests in the U.S. are being abused and destroyed. The author notes the importance of continuing to incentivize working forests and increased forest stocking levels to support forests’ economic viability and the creation of vital environmental and carbon benefits for us all.

Read a summary of Forest2Market’s analysis here.

In a recent piece, “Design for Deconstruction,” ArchDaily singles out wood and mass timber products as key to achieving a lower carbon footprint in the built environment and greater long-term sustainability. The piece cites the circular economy and the built environment sector in Canada in praising wood as the lone construction material made from a renewable resource; for its versatility, durability, and carbon sequestration abilities; and for its ability to be converted to wood fiber and other bio-based products following the conclusion of a building’s useful life, further increasing material productivity and reducing waste.

Read more about how wood supports reduced environmental impact from the building sector here.

Richard Lyall, president of the Residential Construction Council of Ontario, has been named to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat’s (CTBUH’s) five-member steering committee that will oversee the Future Potential of Steel-Timber Composite Structures research project. The two-year project, funded by constructsteel, will study the design, life-cycle cost, environmental, and market benefits of using hybrid steel-mass timber building systems in high-rise buildings. Lyall is also on CTBUH’s Future Timber City research project, which is looking at the design, technologies, construction, and planning needs to build a future mass timber community.

Both projects respond to the growing demand of policy makers and society at large to pursue more sustainable construction methods to reduce carbon emissions.

Read more about Lyall’s appointment here.