Wood Chips

WELCOMING WOOD DESIGN & BUILDING’S NEW PUBLISHER, AND CELEBRATING 30 YEARS OF THE MAGAZINE!

The editorial team is sad to see Etienne Lalonde retire after 28 years as the magazine’s publisher (and national director of the Canadian Wood Council), but we also are welcoming a new year with plenty of reasons to celebrate. Of course, the arrival of COVID vaccines is great news for everyone.

Also, 2021 is Wood Design & Building’s 30th anniversary; the first edition – Wood le bois, at the time – was published in 1991. The magazine has changed dramatically over the years, and as mass timber goes mainstream, we are reaching a wider audience than ever. As a voting member of the International Award for Wood Architecture, representing North America, our voice is heard globally. We are keeping pace with a rapidly evolving industry, so we’re planning some exciting new features in upcoming issues. Stay tuned!

We’re also excited to welcome Andrew Bowerbank as incoming publisher of Wood Design & Building, and the new vice president of market development at the Canadian Wood Council. He is a certified industrial designer, professor and published author with executive leadership experience in Canada’s building, energy and infrastructure sectors, including as CEO of the World Green Building Council. Bowerbank was named one of Canada’s top 16 sustainability leaders through the Clean50 Awards and received the Ontario Premier’s Award for his career accomplishments.

After bidding adieu to 2020, it’s exciting to share some good news. Wood Design & Building wishes everyone a happier and healthier 2021!

PROJECTS TO WATCH

In the most recent e-newsletter, we included a variety of projects:

Central Credit Union Arena, University of Idaho

•Two schools in Vancouver are being updated to seismic standards – by being replaced with mass timber structures.

The B.C. government is investing $46.9M in the pilot project for future mass timber schools; additional funding was provided through Natural Resources Canada’s GCWood

Program.

•At the Mont Ste. Marie ski resor near Ottawa, a $4.5M CLT building with 15 short-term rental units is being planned for completion next spring.

•The new 4,200-seat Central Credit Union Arena at the

University of Idaho is on schedule to open this summer.

The arena is designed for LEED Silver certification, and will be the first wood facility of its size in the state.

•Outside Seattle, a two-storey building is nearing completion, the first mass timber commercial development of its scale in the area.

•Bjarke Ingels’s one-million-sq.ft. campus for Google in California, using mass timber and featuring stepped green roofs, starts construction this year.

•The world’s tallest mass timber tower will be the 25-storey

Ascent mixed-use building, now under construction in

Milwaukee. It is scheduled to open next year.

•In case you missed it (but how could you?): Completed last year, the Taiyuan Domes Botanical Garden in China features three long-span timber gridshells ranging in span from 140 to 300 ft. Covering more than 130,000 sq.ft. and using 11,000 pieces of glulam, with more than 250,000 fasteners, the design was “a significant structural challenge,” according to StructureCraft.

Be sure to visit WoodDesignandBuilding.com to sign up for e-news.

MORE PROJECTS TO WATCH

CANADA

Featuring four new projects in British Columbia

k The new Castlegar Chamber of Commerce and Visitor

Centre will be a $5M, 7,000-sq.ft. structure built to

Passive House standards, designed by Cover Architectural

Collaborative, a multidisciplinary firm based in nearby

Nelson. Construction is expected to begin next year, with local supplier Kalesnikoff Lumber producing the mass timber. The Government of Canada is contributing $1.4M, with almost $1M from the province; the funding is part of the CleanBC Communities Fund, a partnership between the federal and provincial governments.

k In Vancouver, planning is underway for another Passive

House project: On5 is a four-storey building by Hemsworth

Architecture (designers of the Upper Skeena Recreation

Center, which was shortlisted for ArchDaily’s 2021 Building of the Year). The On5’s design will feature CLT shear wall panels and exterior walls, which will be faced with rainscreen and cladding. The designers – working with

Equilibrium Consulting, a Katerra company – also are investigating ways to pre-attach mechanical and electrical systems to the CLT, and the CLT floor panels will implement an innovative resin adhesive system for connections. The building utilizes the same seismic system used in the Fast +

Epp Home Office (featured in the Fall 2020 issue): Tectonus hold-down devices, which were developed in New Zealand. k Due to open this year, the Malahat Skywalk, on Vancouver

Island, is a visitor attraction built of steel and Douglas fir glulam, rising 32 m to a platform where visitors can enjoy spectacular views; the development is a collaborative project with the local First Nation community.

k The 12-storey Tresah building, also on Vancouver Island, will be the largest mass timber multi-family structure in Canada; a livestream of the project can be viewed at tresah.ca. Developed by Mike Geric Construction – working with D’Ambrosio Architecture + Urbanism, RJC Engineers and Kinsol Timber Systems – the building is the first of its kind for Victoria, B.C.

UNITED STATES

k In Boston, the new 345,000-sq.ft. Center for Computing & Data Sciences will be the city’s first building of its size to be carbon-free, targeting LEED Platinum certification.

Designed by Canadian firm KPMB, completion is planned for next year.

k Houston’s San Jacinto College is in the final stages of building the Center for Engineering and Technology, a three-storey, 122,000-sq.ft. mass timber structure by Kirksey

Architecture. It is the nation’s largest mass timber academic building on a college campus, with steel bracing for lateral support. Along with utilizing mass timber for the structural frame, shafts, floors and roof, the project includes a powerful gray water collection system and 30,000 sq.ft. of roofsupported photovoltaics.

UNITED STATES

k An office building expansion is the first large-scale use of modern mass timber in the District of Columbia. The 100,000-sq.ft. addition to 80 M Street SE is designed by

Hickok Cole in collaboration with Arup, adding two storeys and a penthouse, including a rooftop terrace and photovoltaic array, on the existing seven-storey concrete structure. The project is set to become the first highrise overbuild timber structure in North America, and is targeting LEED Gold certification. As the first mass timber structure in D.C. to exceed 85 ft., Hickok Cole’s design was carefully vetted by the code authority before earning approval. Arup’s structural and fire engineers developed new concepts for 80 M’s two-hour-rated exposed timber connections; these were further designed and tested by Katerra, the timber design-assist partner, with help from the Arup team.

k AAbove: in Columbia, S.C., a five-storey, 75,000-sq.ft. building developed by WestLawn recently broke ground, designed by Perkins&Will in collaboration with Robinson Gray Stepp & Laffitte, LLC. It will be the state’s largest mass timber office structure, and the city’s first – part of the BullStreet development, the East Coast’s largest urban redevelopment project. Completion is planned for early next year.

k Close to completion in Alaska, the 27,491-sq.ft. Sitka Sound

Cruise Terminal features a mass timber structure produced by Canadian Timberframes in collaboration with Lignum

Design, both located in Golden, B.C. k In Denver, Cirrus is the first CLT multifamily project in the city, featuring 292 apartments comprising 286,787 sq.ft.

Katerra is providing design, general contracting and material supply services, using CLT for five of the seven storeys. The panels are estimated to sequester more than 7,700 tons of

CO 2, equivalent to the energy consumed by 890 homes in one year. Cirrus is aiming for LEED Silver certification.

k In Nashville, Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture,

StructureCraft and DPR Construction are building the 190,000-sq.ft. Nashville Warehouse Company Office, which is the city’s first large-scale mass timber project.

The two office buildings, up to five storeys tall, are part of a larger mixed-use development. The floor and roof decks are DLT, supported by a glulam post and beam structure

Two other significant projects supplied by Katerra are currently under construction:

k The 100,000-sq.ft., four-storey Fastenal Headquarters in Winona, Minn., is scheduled for completion this fall, with architect of record The Kubala Washatko Architects (TKWA). Three-ply CLT is used for the floors and roof decking. The exterior’s local stone and masonry facade reflects the historic charm of the town.

k In Midlothian, Va., Artistry at Winterfield is the first and largest apartment community in the area, with 15 individual three-storey buildings providing 200 residential units, totaling 210,000 sq.ft. Comprehensive amenities include more than 300 parking spaces, a fitness center, bike storage and dog wash/spa area. Occupation is expected this summer.

INTERNATIONAL

k At 800,000 sq.ft., the government-funded Tianfu

Agriculture Expo in Chengdu, China, will be the largest mass timber structure in Asia – and one of the largest in the world – when it is completed this year. Working with

Chinese architect CuiKai, StructureCraft developed the design for five exhibition halls using innovative, hybrid wood-steel Vierendeel trusses to achieve clear spans of more than 375 ft. and heights of 150 ft. CNC files were generated for each of more than 8,000 unique glulam pieces, produced by Hasslacher Norica Timber. The giant truss systems weighed in at more than 30 tons. In Canada, the StructureCraft team is using an advanced remote management system to provide real-time control of QC/

QA on the site.

k A Stirling Prize winner and one of the founding signatories of the climate change action group Architects

Declare, U.K. firm Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios is designing a six-storey, 60,000-sq.ft. CLT office building,

Paradise, located in Vauxhall, London. The net-zero hybrid structure will be a combination of CLT, glulam and some supporting steel beams, on a concrete foundation.

k The recently announced WoHo tower in Berlin will be the world’s tallest hybrid timber building, at 29 storeys.

Norwegian architects mad arkitekter designed the mixeduse structure with a steel-reinforced concrete framework, but the majority of the structure will be wood.

MODULAR MANIA

Over the past few years, several of the wood buildings that have caught our attention were modular. Mentioned in our last issue, which focused on hospitality projects, the Hotel Jakarta by SeARCH Architects won a 2018 Architecture MasterPrize for Green Architecture. The climate-neutral luxury hotel is constructed of 176 room modules, with a load-bearing wood structure in addition to CLT walls and roof. This issue’s feature, “A Modular Revolution” (p.32), takes a closer look at other notable projects around the world. We also compiled a shortlist of more interesting companies that are exploring this realm:

k Click Modular Homes: Five wood-framed units – from a 510-sq.ft. micro-home to 1,100-sq.ft., three-bedroom bungalow – are produced by this B.C.-based company, starting at close to $150,000.

k Pluspuu: The Finnish design-build company has been producing modular, cabin-style prefabs since 2017.

Fourteen models range in size from studio to four bedrooms, including two sauna structures. The houses are manufactured by Ollikaisen Hirsirakenne Oy, a traditional log house factory in southern Finland.

k EcoHome/Écohabitation: This Montreal-based company collaborates with well-known architects to create prefabricated home kits up to 2,310 sq.ft., with seven models that are designed to LEED and Passive House standards.

k Drop Structures: Five compact models built in Alberta, each with a Douglas fir main structure, are completely finished and “ready for plug and play.” Baltic birch is used for interiors, with cedar decks in larger models. Starting at $27,800 to over $100,000, these units have become popular for resort destinations and remote locations; the total price includes delivery to anywhere in North America,

k R-Hauz: We recently spoke with co-founder Leith Moore about the company’s first six-storey, all-wood mass timber building in Toronto, the R-Town Pilot apartment building.

“Panelized is the new modular,” Moore proclaimed. This

CLT prototype is a “repeatable” mid-rise design that can be scaled to 20-, 40- or 60-foot-wide lots; the mass timber structure was assembled in less than six weeks, in conjunction with CMV Architects and Moses Engineering.

R-Hauz is expanding quickly, with more than 20 new projects in planning.

“Against the Grain” also features some of our favorite compact modular units – perfect backyard studios for working from home.