TIMBER CITY | WOOD TOWERS Mid-Rise and High-Rise Construction in Wood
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timber frame connection with structural timber in-fill panel TIMBER CITY | WOOD TOWERS mid-rise and high-rise construction in wood EMERGING PROFESSIONALS TRAVEL SCHOLARSHIP | JOE MAYO 2 OPPOSITE PAGE: “On the Spring Boards and in the Undercut. Washington bolt cutter and daughters, 1905.” by Darrius Kinsey INTRODUCTION In 1905 a small shop in the St. Laminated Timber and Brettstapel A/E firms in Europe have overcome John’s district of Portland, Oregon construction have been used to the structural and life-safety issues prepared for the World’s Fair in exploit the full potential of wood that limit height and areas of wood honor of the 100th anniversary as a construction material. buildings. Codes are being re- of Lewis and Clark’s expedition. written and new products are being Gustav Carlson, the shop’s owner, The United States, however, developed. I believe now is the decided to laminate Northwest has lagged behind as Europe time to learn from the experience of softwoods into a panel, which continues to innovate and push these firms and become innovators he called “3-ply veneer work.” the potential of wood construction ourselves. Researching modern The product, a precursor of our in larger buildings. mid-rise and high-rise wood modern plywood panel, sparked buildings and their technologies is a considerable interest at the fair, In the Northwest wood is our natural choice for Seattle, and this is and soon after an industry was vernacular. Wood is an extension what I propose to do. born 1. of our forests and our forests are an extension of us. Wood is the Just as plywood revolutionized natural choice for Seattle and I wood construction in the believe that it will be the material twentieth century, new of the twenty-first century. It is innovations in wood stand to unmatched in its environmental reshape our assumptions of this benefits, its availability, its ease material in the twenty-first. In of use and its beauty. It is time Europe thirty-story wood buildings to learn from European examples are planned, and many mid-rise of mid-rise and high-rise wood wood buildings have already been buildings. constructed within dense urban fabric. Technologies like Cross WOOD TOWERS | EMERGING PROFESSIONALS TRAVEL SCHOLARSHIP | JOE MAYO 3 INNOVATION Across Europe innovative new The Barents Secretariat building, Murray Grove, a nine storey wood buildings are challenging a seventeen-storey wooden residential building in Hoxton, conventional regulations and cultural center in Kirkenes, London designed by Waugh hold potential to define what Norway, designed by Oslo-based Thistleton Architects has already true sustainable design and Reiulf Ramstad Architects, is also been completed out of Cross construction will look like in the planned as a pilot project for Laminated Timber (CLT) 4. Because future. innovative wood construction 3. of the panel’s off-site fabrication The building will house the and ease of use, the construction The tallest wood building Barents Secretariat as well as a time was compressed from 66 currently planned is a thirty- library, a theater and space for weeks for a concrete building to floor tower of hybrid wood and artists, researchers and students. 49 weeks. Not only this, but all the concrete construction, the CREE Not only will the building units were purchased after one (Creative Renewable Energy and be a symbol for sustainable hour and fifteen minutes of being Efficiency) in Dornbirn, Austria2 . construction, it will also act as a on sale 4. Waugh Thistleton’s The project is designed to meet “center for cooperation” between web site claims that there is 100 passive house standards, be Russians, Finns, Swedes, Saamis percent satisfaction among the carbon-neutral and energy and Norwegians 3. tenants. positive (photovoltaic facade). This building is marketed as a Wood knits a common thread prototype that can be exported to between the cultures. locations around the world. ABOVE LEFT: The CREE’s timber frame and timber concrete floor system 2 ABOVE: Sequential diagrams of the CREE’s modular construction 2 4 In addition to these projects, The advantages of using a natural, several six and seven-story timber local, carbon-reducing material ABOVE LEFT: The 17-story buildings, many in rich urban are abundant. Beyond the unique timber Barents Secretariat 3 settings such as Berlin and Zurich, sensual appeal of wood, these building have been completed. buildings require fewer trades, ABOVE CENTER: The 9-story reduce construction time, overall Murray Grove, London 4 Feilden Clegg Bradley Studio’s costs, and have the potential to be Woodland Trust Headquarters truly carbon-neutral if not carbon- ABOVE: The 7-story in Grantham, UK uses wood negative. Esmarchstrasse 3, inserted in a completely new way by into the dense urban fabric of Berlin suspending precast concrete In the midst of cascading elements from a CLT roof environmental crisis, now is structure. The two materials work the time to re-examine wood in unison as a single structural construction as a sustainable element. The intermitent concrete material that, as proved by many panels provide thermal mass to European examples, can be used regulate the building’s internal safely in high-rise and mid-rise temperature, while the CLT urban applications, such as Seattle. structure provides cost efficiency, meets environmental goals and is a beautiful finish material. WOOD TOWERS | EMERGING PROFESSIONALS TRAVEL SCHOLARSHIP | JOE MAYO 5 THE LOCAL GREEN The Great Northwest is an The Wood Materials & Engineering Wood is an emotive material. It environment rich in forests and Laboratory at Washington State roots us in place and soothes us. timber. Our forested natural University in Pullman is an It has, as Matteo Thun describes, a resources are indeed what most example of the deep connection “high-touch rather than high-tech people imagine when speaking of between material and place. As quality.” 7 the region. one of the premiere laboratories for wood construction, the However, wood is not only The use of timber as a means of lab researches new ways of sensually appealing, but also construction goes back to the building with wood, as well a material with enormous native inhabitants of what is as testing performance and environmental benefits. In a now Seattle, the Duwamish, who design methodologies. Through total life cycle assessment of CO2 used timber and cedar planks innovation, wood can remain production, wood outperforms to construct longhouses in their a vital part of our region’s long other common construction villages 5. These seminal buildings history and tradition. materials. See Chart 1 and were a true expression of the Chart 2 for a comparison of CO2 Northwest and stood in harmony emmissions for wood as compared with the environment. Later, with other building materials. lumber created the first boom in Seattle and Henry Yesler, with his steam-powered saw mill, became the city’s first millionaire 5. ABOVE: Reconstruction of Chinook-style cedar plankhouse at the Ridgefield The history and mythology of National Wildlife Refuge 6 timber and mighty trees runs deep here, and keeping this connection ABOVE LEFT: Washington’s strong is part of Seattle’s identity. forests from Yellow Aster Butte 6 Chart 1 from CORRIM (Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials) 8 : CO2 Emissions of steel and concrete compared to wood, Chart 2 9 : CO2 Emissions of common building materials Sawn Timber Softwood Plywoo d Birch Plywoood LVL Particle Board WOOD Hardboard WOOD TOWERS | EMERGING PROFESSIONALS TRAVELG SCHOLARSHIPypsum | JOEBo MAYOard Red Bricks NET CO2 EMISSIONS Standard Concrete CEMENT Special Concrete Hollow-core Elements 5 4 3 Steel Plates and Rolls Steel Beams 2 Steel Pipe Beams 1 STEEL Aluminum Facade Elements 0 -1 -2 7 200 180 45 yr rotation 160 140 80 yr rotation 120 120 yr rotation 100 80 No harvest 60 CARBON (tonnes/acre) 40 20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 YEARS AFTER PLANTING Chart 3: Various carbon sequestration potentials for Northwest Douglas Fir harvests 11 INDUSTRY To achieve carbon neutrality, Wood comes from our forests The Northwest has a history of wood can play a big role for which sequester carbon and wood as a means of construction, several reasons. First, forests help regulate the earth’s natural a work force skilled in its use, grow from light, soil, air and systems. It has been shown that a and an entire timber industry water, making the use of lumber pound of wood will sequester 1.47 that benefits from its use and one of the simplest solutions pounds of carbon and replace it innovation. The Canadian Wood for construction material. No with 1.07 pounds of oxygen 10. Council notes: environmentally devastating Moreover, when wood is mining or extraction processes converted to lumber products, it The potential for Cross Laminated are used with lumber, and with retains much of its carbon content Timber systems to compete with the continued growth of the rather than releasing it into the concrete and steel construction Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) atmosphere 12. Finally, at the in North America is significant, most notably in mid-rise multi- and sustainable forestry, the end of its life cycle, wood can be family and specific non-residential harvesting of timber is continuing returned to the earth as soil for low-rise construction projects to become more environmentally new life or consumed as biomass in the short-term and mid-rise benign. for heating and energy. non-residential construction in the medium-term. This is due to The use of wood has a many economic and building regenerative effect on the performance factors but also the environment and is a true cradle- increasing focus on environmental to-cradle material. In the face of sustainability and related objectives deteriorating ecosystems, species of reducing the carbon footprint of buildings.