My new book, Innovations in Mass Timber, a global tour of 16 cutting-edge commercial and multifamily projects, will be available through myriad book-buying platforms in late May. The book provides a comprehensive tour of the world’s most innovative buildings with an eye toward helping professionals tackle their first project. It includes detailed information on evolving floor, wall, and ceiling assembles and addresses technical challenges, such as how to mitigate water damage and meet Passive House challenges. Amazon recently listed Innovations in Mass Timber as its No. 1 release in the architectural materials category.
Prized for its ability to sequester carbon, mass timber is entering a critical second phase of development. Early projects, often supported by government grants, provided a proof of concept and worked out design and construction kinks. Now a second generation of market-rate projects has appeared. Early evidence suggests that plyscrapers attract sustanability-minded tenants willing to pay higher lease rates. Higher revenue streams mitigate first-costs associated with new technology.
Mass timber holds the potential to sequester carbon from the atmosphere and hold it in buildings indefinitely. Whether it lives up to this potential depends on whether the wood sourced to make glulam beams, laminated veneer lumber, and cross-laminated timbers comes from sustainably managed forests. Engineered wood must not be allowed to rot at the end of its useful life in a building or else sequestered carbon returns to the atmosphere. For that reason, many of the latest mass timber buildings may be taken apart, so that their wood may be used elsewhere.
The book tells the story of mass timber adoption through a series of case studies, selected to highlight the major issues associated with the new material. Case studies, designed to appeal to all the major parties to a project — owners, architects, engineers, timber fabricators, and contractors — focus on acoustic design, construction staging, and financial performance, among other topics. The book showcases the full spectrum of commerical projects, demonstrating the material’s appropriateness for places of worship, factories, and everything in between. Technical sidebars detail methods for moisture control, fire supression, and noise abatement.
Leave a Reply